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U. S. SERVICE SERIES 


THE BOY WITH 
THE U. S. NAVY 


BY 

FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER 

‘A 


With Thirty Illustrations from Photographs, 

Many of which were Furnished by the U. S. Navy 

> ■» 

A ' ■ 

> > 



BOSTON 

LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO. 











Copyright, 1927, 

By Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co. 

All Rights Reserved 

The Boy with the U. S. Navy 



« « » 


Printed in U. S. A. 

IRorwooD ipress 
BERWICK & SMITH CO. 
Norwood, Mass. 

OCT 2i 1927 


©C1A1004811 





PREFACE 


The sea has always held its romance, and the 
Navy in all times has been instinct with the spirit of 
courage and daring. These factors have not been 
dimmed by the development of the United States 
Navy into an organization equally admirable in 
peace and in war. The roster of naval heroes, alone, 
is one of which the .United States has just reason 
to be proud. 

Yet, in a measure, the Navy itself is greater than 
the work it has done either for peace or for war. 
It is greater because it has been, and it is—there is 
no reason to doubt that it always will be—one of 
the most sterling forces in the development of 
American manhood. The question is often asked: 

What is an American? A good answer would 
be: “The Navy man, enlisted man and officer 
alike! ” 

The splendor of these three aspects of the United 
States Navy, its work in peace, in war, and in the 
development of American manhood is rightly one of 
the nation’s proudest boasts. Never will the Stars 
and Stripes be dishonored while it floats over a naval 


v 



VI 


PREFACE 


vessel. To try to give some idea of the value and 
soundness of the U. S. Navy, and to urge some 
young Americans to join its superb ranks and all 
young Americans to hold it in the highest honor and 
esteem, is the aim and purpose of 


The Author. 


FOREWORD 


The Author desires to express his gratitude for 
the courtesies extended to him by the United States 
Navy Department in the giving of much valuable 
information and the use of many photographs. He 
desires, also, to acknowledge his indebtedness to the 
works of Lieut.-Commander Fitzhugh Green, whose 
books on U. S. Navy life have become a part of every 
American boy^s heritage. 


CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

On a Coral Reef .... 

• 

PAGE 

1 

CHAPTER II 
Fighting the Breakers 

• 

. 14 

CHAPTER III 

A Lighthouse Murder . 

• 

. 29 

CHAPTER IV, 

A Cowardly Rescue 

• 

. 45 

CHAPTER Vi 

The Bluejackets Come 

• 

. 60 

CHAPTER VI 
Romances of Daring 

• 

. 75 

CHAPTER VII 

Ironclads. 

• 

00 

00 

• 

CHAPTER VIII 
Boots ” . 


. 104 

CHAPTER IX 
Aboard a Battleship 

• 

. 118 

CHAPTER X 

At Sea. 

• • • 

Vlll 

• 

. 135 



CONTENTS 

ix 

CHAPTER XI 

Fourteen-inch Babies . . . . 

. 148 

CHAPTER XII 

Flashing Heroism ’ . . . . 

. 165 

CHAPTER XIII 
Fighters, Old and New 

. 183 

CHAPTER XIV 

Destroyer Men. 

. 199 

CHAPTER XV 

Naval War To-day . . . . 

. 218 

CHAPTER XVI 

With the Submarines . . . . 

. 235 

CHAPTER XVII 

Hawks Overhead! . . . . 

. 248 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


The Stars and Stripes Forever! 

Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

In Memory of Gallant Comrades 

• • 

28 

Honoring Shipmates Gone 

• • 

29 

On Guard in China .... 

• • 

74 

Honor to Heroes of a Friendly Nation . 

Historic Combat between Monitor and Mer- 

75 

rimac . 

With the American Fleet at Winter Manoeu- 

90 

vres. 


91 

Signalmen at Work .... 

• • 

114 

U. S. S. Nevada in Target Test 

• • 

115 

Target Repair Crews at Work 

• • 

115 

U. S. S. Maryland .... 

• • 

134 

Holystoning the Decks of a Battleship 

• • 

135 

Big Guns on the U. S. S. Colorado . 

• • 

164 

The Mouth of a Giant . 

• • 

165 

Electrical Control Room . 

• • 

174 

Operating Platform .... 

• • 

175 

A Battleship Foremast . 

• • 

182 


X 




ILLUSTRATIONS 


xl 

Launching a Battleship.183 

“ Swimming Call .190 

Tassie ’’.191 

U. S. Naval Training Station, San Diego, Cali¬ 
fornia .198 

A Torpedo-Boat Destroyer . . . .199 

Destroyers Defeat Dreadnaughts . . . 220 

Home Again! Pacific Fleet Returns . .221 

The Hero of Nanking.234 

U. S. Bluejackets.235 

The Holder of the Depth Record . . . 246 

The Victors and their Trophy .... 247 

Combat Planes Prepare for Catapulting . . 254 

Scout Planes of the Battleships . . . 255 





THE BOY WITH THE 
U. S. NAVY 


CHAPTER I 

ON A CORAL REEF 

“ Watch belo-o-w! All hands ’bout ship! ” 

Clem rolled over in his bunk, with a growl. 

It had been an ugly night, with the tail of a Texas 

norther” blowing, and a stiff sea runnmg. The 
watch below had turned in all standing,” that is, 
fully dressed save for sea-boots and oilskins. 

At the call, the boy tumbled up the fo’c’sle ladder, 
following the other man of the watch. On board 
the barquentine Preciosa^ every man was needed, 
even to the cook, when any work was to be done. 
Her crew numbered only seven men, all told: Cap¬ 
tain, mate, an able seaman, and an ordinary seaman 
on each watch, and the cook; a small crew for deep¬ 
water voyaging. 

The boy had held the second trick at the wheel, 

* The name of the vessel has been changed. Otherwise, this is 
an account of an actual shipwreck which happened to the Au¬ 
thor, when a boy. F. R-W. 

I 


2 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


the watch before, standing “ off and on,” keeping in 
sight a revolving light which he supposed to be one 
of the lights of the Honduras coast. The mate had 
warned him to watch his steering and had heaved 
the lead several times, for the Honduras coast has 
an evil reputation. It is studded with coral reefs, 
and possesses a sullen power of raising a tremendous 
surf under a capful of wind—^no place to be caught 
on a lee shore! Such places are the graveyards of 
the deep, and uncounted bones glimmer from the 
sands below through the translucent water. 

Clem,” the mate had asked him, toward the end 
of the watch, do you hear anything? ” 

The boy had listened, carefully. 

I^m not sure, sir,” he had answered; seems as 
though there were a fog-horn blowing, a long way 
off, very faint.” 

Breakers! ” said the mate, shortly. I thought 
so. Keep her away a bit! ” 

He muttered uneasily as he turned away. 

The mate was an old-timer in the Gulf of Mexico, 
and his anxiety communicated itself to the boy. 
The sound of breakers on a lee shore spells danger 
even to the most inexperienced, and Clem was only 
too ready to leave the wheel when eight bells had 
struck and the watch had been relieved. 


ON A CORAL REEF 


3 

When he got up on deck again, he saw that the 
reefs of the fore upper topsail had been shaken out 
since he went below. The main and the mizzen 
were single-reefed still, and the Preciosa was close- 
hauled on the port tack. 

The wind had dropped a little at dawn, but the 
ground swell was running heavily. A distant roar¬ 
ing reminded Clem of the maters words, and he cast 
a look to leeward. Yes, that line of white must be 
breakers! 

He went to the jib sheets, his station for ^bout 
ship,^’ and waited for the skipper^s orders. The other 
ordinary seaman, a young French Canadian named 
Claude, was standing by the lee fore-yard and fore- 
topsail-yard braces, one turn only around the be- 
laying-pin. The rest of the crew was ready to tad 
on the fore weather-braces. 

The sun was rising, astern. It was a fine clear 
morning after the blow, an ideal summer morning 
in the Gulf. The brightness helped to dispel the 
lad^s fears, though, as he passed the mate to take 
up his post, he saw that the old navigator was still 
uneasy. 

Right ahead, a sea-mile or so away, the low line 
of a small island—^which Clem learned afterward 
was named Nine Quays Island—showed up, looking 


■v:^V 








4 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

very near. It was little more than a sun-smitten 
and spray-whipped strip of sand, semicircular in 
shape, with a straggling wild plantation of cocoanut 
palms at one end, a low stone lighthouse at the 
other. The usual double reef of coral encircled it, 
and a pounding surf broke heavily on the outer 
reef. 

Both to port and starboard, the sea was flecked 
with patches of white; shallow soundings on which 
the waves were breaking. Little round nigger- 

j 

heads’’ of coral spotted the surface alee. There 
was not much sea-room. 

The minutes passed. 

Clem, from his post on the forecastle head, right 
in the bows of the ship, saw clearly the sea-bottom 
when he looked over the vessel’s side. The water 
was crystal clear, and, to his startled fancy, it did 
not seem as if there were two fathoms’ depth be¬ 
neath the ship. Every second of delay added to the 
danger. 

On and on! 

The reefs grew nearer; alarmingly near. 

Then, from his cabin aft, the captain came up 
on the poop, holding something which he hugged 
closely to his chest. He went swiftly to the side and 
threw it overboard. The man at the wheel, in the 


ON A CORAL REEF 


5 

minutes of panic, afterward savagely told the cook 
that it looked to him like a tin box, such as that in 
which the ship’s papers were kept. What did that 
imply? 

The object—^whatever it was—thrown overboard, 
the captain took the wheel and sent the helmsman 
forward to help with the sails. 

Immediately after, the rattle of the wheel-chains 
was heard. 

Stand by to ’bout ship! ” came the cry. 

It was time! The water was shoaling fast and 
the reefs looked wickedly close. 

Clem’s vague fears began to take form, but, at 
that instant, came the expected call: 

Hard down I ” (Putting the helm down to bring 
the ship into the eye of the wind.) 

Clem, his eyes on the end of the jib-boom, which 
pointed directly over the island, marked the spot 
for which the barquentine was heading, expecting 
to see her turn swiftly and come up into the wind. 
He cast an anxious look to windward. A line of 
breakers was there, too! 

His fears grew, and he watched the ship’s bow 
with a terrible eagerness. The seconds seemed like 
ages. What was wrong? What was wrong! Some¬ 
thing must be. 


6 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


Ah! At last! The ship began to turn, but slowly, 
how slowly! 

The wheel-chains, aft, rattled softly. Clem no¬ 
ticed the sound but did not think much about it, 
at the time. He remembered, afterward. 

But- 

Watching the jib-boom anxiously, the boy saw 
that the vessel was turning, truly, but heavily, slug¬ 
gishly. What was wrong? With the way (speed) 
that she had, the ship should have come up into the 
wind’s eye, fast. 

Was she going to miss stays? She had never done 
so before! 

She came up slowly, none the less, and the jibs 
began to flutter. Clem got ready to haul the sheets 
over. 

Came the command: 

’Bout ship! ” 

At last! 

The lee braces were let go, and, freed from the 
strain of waiting, the crew started to haul in, hand 
over hand, breaking into the old chanty, perhaps the 
most famous of all sea chanties: 

‘‘Oh, in EI-o Gra-a-nde where I—was bom, 

Heave a-WAY for EI-o!” 



ON A CORAL REEF 


7 


The yards spun round. 

Clem breathed a sigh of relief, for he had seen the 
fulness of the danger. His father had been a big 
ship-owner in Massachusetts before he had been 
ruined by an unlucky venture, and the boy had 
heard sea-yarns innumerable. He had never been in 
Honduras waters, before, but he knew that the coral 
reefs of the Gulf of Mexico have given grim founda¬ 
tion for many a deep-sea tragedy. 

Then, as the square-sails came aback, Clem, 
watching the bow of the ship, saw her begin to fall 
off again. 

Disaster! 

She had missed stays! 

The reefs were only a few cables’ length away! 

Wear ship! ” came the sudden cry from aft. 

From amidships, Clem heard a hoarse and angry 
murmur. Sailormen, especially the old shellbacks 
of windjammer days, can handle the sails of a ship 
as well as any shipmaster, and it needed but little 
sea-knowledge to see that there was no space to 
wear! That is a slow manoeuvre, turning the ship 
through three-quarters of the compass circle, and 
it takes plenty of sea-room. 

But an order is an order! 

The crew jumped across the deck, knowing that a 


8 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

minute’s delay might mean their doom, but the 
braces were hardly more than in their hands, when 
the ship rasped along the bottom. 

The grinding shock threw every man to the deck, 
and nearly pitched Clem overboard, but the Pre- 
ciosa lifted on the swell, bumped again, and sped on. 

Lively, men! ” shouted the mate, scrambling to 
his feet. Bring her round 1 ” 

They grabbed the ropes, but the sickening grind 
on the vessel’s keel came again. 

Oaths and cries rang out. 

‘^Haul! ” yelled the mate. 

Some pulled, some dropped the ropes, others 
stood paralyzed. 

No one needed to be told that it was too late! 

The wheel-chains rattled again. What was the 
skipper doing with the wheel? Putting it up, or 
down? 

No one knew. 

The first burst of shouting over, there was si¬ 
lence; the awful silence of dread. There was noth¬ 
ing more to be done. 

Two, three minutes passed in that agonized sus¬ 
pense. It seemed impossible, unbelievable, that 
disaster and destruction could be just ahead on a 
clear, sunny morning. Shipwreck in a storm is un- 


ON A CORAL REEF 


9 

derstandable, but there was something terribly 
malevolent in this helpless drive on death. 

There came another grind on the keel, a tearing 
wrench, and the vessel struck, almost bow on. 

A curling breaker took her, lifted her sidewise, 
and crashed her down on the reef. The steel plates 
—the Preciosa was a new ship, on her maiden voy¬ 
age—crumpled in like paper. 

Out with the boats! The cry came from cap¬ 
tain and mate simultaneously. 

Useless! Utterly useless! 

The surf drove at the hapless vessel with de¬ 
moniac violence. 

A second breaker lifted and fell, crashing the ves¬ 
sel down again with a shock that smashed every¬ 
thing. Foremast and maintopmast went by the 
board. The ship fell heavily on her port beam, the 
decks at an angle of thirty degrees, the port boat 
smashed to splinters. Two men were hurled over¬ 
board. 

Discipline still held. The rest of the crew tried 
to clamber up the sloping deck to the davits of the 
starboard boat, swinging inboard at an impossible 
angle. 

There was nothing to He done; nothing! 

The boat could not be swung outboard, and, even 



10 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


if she were, the roaring surf would smash her like 
an egg-shell against the side of the vessel. What 
would be the next order? 

I 

Abandon ship! 

The captain’s shout could just be heard above 
the tumult of the breakers. Faintly as he heard it, 
Clem noted the manner of the cry. There was no 
panic in the tone, no surprise. It sounded almost 
as if the skipper had anticipated the wreck. It was 
a snatch of thought, only, for Abandon ship! ” is 
the most terrible cry of the sea. 

Clem, stunned by the shock, deafened by the roar 
of the water, clung blindly to the capstan on the 
forecastle head, the only thing which could keep 
him from slipping into the raging maelstrom a few 
feet below. 

He saw Claude scrambling toward him. The two 
were good friends. 

‘‘Can you swim, Clem?” his comrade shouted, 
trying to make himself heard above the fury of the 
surf and the thousand sounds of destruction as the 
weather shrouds parted like pistol shots, the spars 
craeked and splintered on the rocks, and the vessel 
herself ground, and rasped, and rove herself to ruin 
on the jagged coral reef. ^ 

“ No; not a stroke! ” he yelled back. 


ON A CORAL REEF 


II 


“ Don’t try, then. Crawl over the reef—^between 
breakers. Go quick! I’m off. Good luck! ” 

He cast himself into the breaker which was just 
lifting itself up, uncurling, green, smooth-crested as 
though conscious of its awful power. Claude was 
seized by its tremendous clutch. Swim? As well 
might a May-fly face a hurricane! ' 

Clutching tightly to the capstan, Clem watched 
his friend, his heart pounding fast in anticipated 
horror. 

The monster wave swept Claude half-way across 
the reef, then, as the black rock-fangs bit into its 
base, it curled and broke like a pack of sea-flends, 
dashing its victim on the pointed rocks with ap¬ 
palling violence. No living thing could have sur¬ 
vived that crash. Every bone was broken. The 
backwash carried a limp form back, a body, only. 
Life had been smashed out in a single second. 

Clem, about to venture, clung the more tightly 
to his slippery hold, horrified. 

Only three men, now, were left on board: the cap¬ 
tain, on the poop; the cook, amidships; and Clem, 
clinging to the capstan on the forecastle head. 

A huge breaker came roaring over, even larger 
than the mighty wave which had smashed Clem’s 
comrade into an instantaneous death. 


12 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

The captain and the cook launched themselves 
into it. Both were powerful swimmers. 

The cook disappeared in the spume, as the breaker 
thundered over the reef. 

But Clem, watching in the fixity of terror, saw— 
as the backwash hissed and boiled through the 
demon-teeth of the coral—the skipper on the farther 
side of that savage line of rocks, desperately clinging 
for life to a jagged spur. 

The sucking undertow ebbed, but the man held 
firm, with almost superhuman strength. 

Through the spray and spume the skipper scram¬ 
bled ahead a yard or two, then grabbed, desperately, 
anew. 

A second breaker, less in size and volume, swept ~ 
over him, but without breaking his hold. Again, in 
the ebb, the man crawled forward a couple of yards, 
reached the inner edge of the outer reef, and plunged 
in the swirl of water between it and the inner circle 
of coral. A strong swimmer, he crossed it, though 
not without a fight. Over the inner reef he worked 
his way, and, a moment later, Clem saw him swim¬ 
ming quietly across the calm lagoon that lay be¬ 
tween the inner reef and the shore. 

One man, at least, had got ashore alive! 

The sight put hope into Clem. Escape was pos- 


ON A CORAL REEF 


13 

sible, then! He was not a swimmer, but life was 
worth a try! 

He was the last to leave the ship. 

The bow, the highest point out of water, had not 
yet been overswept by the waves, but a terrible 
crunch amidships, together with a sinking of the 
ship beneath his feet, warned Clem that she had 
broken her back. He had not a second to lose! 

The bowsprit and jib-boom had been broken off 
at the first shock, close by the figurehead, but were 
still held to the ship by the tangle of shrouds and 
the clanging martingale chains. The spars pointed 
half-way over the reefs, but they were fiung and 
tossed with fearful violence by the rush and back- 
swirl of the tremendous breakers. 

It was a thousandfold more dangerous to venture 
on the spars than to plunge directly into the sea, for 
the threshing spars would snap a bone like a pipe- 
stem, should arm or leg be caught between them. 
He must risk it! He could not swim! 

The bow sagged anew and commenced to slip. 
He must go! 


CHAPTER II 


FIGHTING THE BREAKERS 

Clem looked ahead of him, looked below. Death, 
in one form or another, waited for him hungrily. 

The bow heeled over. 

With a cry of desperation, the boy let go his hold 
on the capstan, snatched at a stay and swung him¬ 
self out on the bowsprit and the shattered jib-boom. 

The spar rose like some tremendous bucking 
monster, and half whirled. The wire ropes lashed 
around him like maddened water-snakes. 

At the same instant, tons upon tons of water 
roared down upon him. No human grip could have 
withstood such a pressure! His handhold was torn 
away and he was hurled forward like a chip in a 
Niagara. But the wave whirled him into a tangle 
of cordage and wire rope. By some miracle, he was 
not cut in two. 

The wave broke and receded. 

Frenziedly, following some crude and unreasoning 
instinct of self-preservation, Clem jerked himself 
clear and snatched at the jib-boom again. He was 


FIGHTING THE BREAKERS 15 

deafened and blinded by the water, choking and 
gasping, bruised and sore. 

Another breaker curled over. 

Savagely—he had no time to grasp a rope—^he 
thrust his body in between the foot-rope of the fly¬ 
ing jib, and the jib-boom. The pressure of the 
water thrust him into the crotch as in a vise, but, 
just as the backwash came, it dragged him out again, 
and he wriggled free. 

There was nothing in front of him, now, but the 
reef! 

He dropped upon the black, serrated coral. Never 
had he supposed that it could be so terribly sharp, 
saw-like, with every foot of it a jagged spine. The 
ragged spurs tore away his flesh and lacerated him 
terribly. 

Another breaker curled overhead and roared 
upon him, but he was to the lee of the ship, and 
the wave broke just before reaching him. 

With all his might, arms and legs curled around 
an up-thrusting tooth, cut and bleeding, half- 
drowned, panting, he clung with the desperate mad¬ 
ness which comes with a fight for life. He should 
have got away before the next breaker came, but 
he could not. He had neither strength nor breath, 
even to try. 



i6 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

The hungry surf raged furiously at him. High 
above rose anew a green volume of hurtling destruc¬ 
tion. It rolled on, gathering in violence, then 
crashed like Doom on the black reef, just beyond 
him. He was under water a good minute—it seemed 
to him like an eternity—and he thought his lungs 
would burst before the wave ebbed away. The 
backwash, hissing and sucking, dragged at him like 
the tentacles of some monstrous but invisible octo¬ 
pus. Somehow, his grip held. 

Wildly, madly, in the ebb he scrambled forward 
to a small spur, two yards farther on. 

Then a moment of relief! 

The next wave was a small one. It almost broke 
him from his hold, but the backwash was small. 

On! 

He crawled jerkily a good three yards farther, 
cutting his feet and hands to the bone. 

But he had gone too fast; too far! 

• Thinking only of getting across the reef, he Had 
not looked for a solid handhold, and the next 
breaker broke him away, tossed him sideways, rolled 
him on the coral, and the backwash dragged him 
back, cut in a dozen places, almost to the cruel and 
deadly menace of the tossing spars. Fortunately, 
the first crash of the breaker had not thrown him 



FIGHTING THE BREAKERS 17 

on sharp coral, but into a rock-pool. That, and that 
alone, had saved him! 

Back to the struggle! 

Scrambling forward, dragged back, beaten on the 
ragged reef or half-strangled under the wild whirl 
of water, the boy lost all sense of time, all feeling 
of a goal. It seemed to him that he had been 
struggling, drowning, fighting for his life for cen¬ 
turies! 

Without knowing how, he found himself on the 
inner edge of the terrible outer reef. The waves 
pounded toward him with all their stunning violence, 
but they broke before reaching. The swirling water 
washed over him, as he clung to the coral, but only 
for a score of seconds at a time, giving him a chance 
to breathe, between. 

For the first time since he had ventured on the 
tossing spars, he had a moment to think. Unless 
some especially huge breaker came, the backwash 
would not break him from his hold. 

But he was far, far from safety! Between him 
and the inner reef lay twenty yards of swirling 
water, foam-covered, chopped with cross-currents, 
raging furiously. And he could not swim! 

Foot by foot he edged his way around the inner 
edge of the reef-barrier, snatching from one hand- 


18 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

hold to another, the swirl of water in that tortured 
channel swinging him this way and that. One eddy 
drove him against a submerged rock, cruelly bruis¬ 
ing his knee, but the numbness of the pain passed 
away in a few minutes. He made his way along, 
spur by spur, hoping to find some point where the 
distance between the two encircling reefs might be 
narrower. 

Near the “ opening ’’ or point on the outer reef 
where the rock did not come quite to the surface 
of the water, the coral was less regularly circular in 
its formation, and a brown spot, midway in the 
channel, showed that there was a shallow there. 
This broke the distance in half. Ten yards was 
easier to cross than twenty! 

Clem had already kicked off his boots, now he 
slipped off his trousers. Near the reef opening, the 
breakers rolled in farther, but the boy had made the 
circuit of a third of the reef, and the waves came in 
at an angle. 

It was well for the boy that he had time to think! 
He had begun to get back his breath and his poise. 

Reasoning out his chances, he saw that if he 
headed straight for the rock in mid-channel, the 
sidewise sweep of the surge would drive him past 
it, and the backwash might drag him back, back, 


FIGHTING THE BREAKERS 19 

over the outer reef again. He retraced his way, un¬ 
til he came just in a line with the driving move¬ 
ment of the surge. 

The water ripped and tossed, yellow-white with 
spume, lashed with cross-currents and under-tow, 
terrible as any rapid. But the shelf of rock was 
only ten yards away. He must risk all before his 
strength failed. Reach it, or drown! 

Though the reef was cruelly sharp, Clem got to 
his feet and leaped forward. He had never dived in 
his life before, but he had seen people diving, and 
he tried to copy the pose. Not knowing how to 
take the water, he hit it slap, jarring his stomach 
badly, but he had sense enough to keep his arms 
rigid, even under the water. 

The roll of the surge helped him. Without even 
a single effort to swim, he slid directly to the rock. 
He caught it, and got his head above water. 

Half-way 1 

For the moment, he was comparatively safe. The 
rock, moderately flat despite its sharpness, was not 
more than a foot under water. He could stand on 
it, though, more than once, the swirl of the surge 
around his feet nearly swept him from his footing. 

Another ten yards to make! 

Adopting the same tactics, the boy leaped for- 


20 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

ward with all his might. He should have done it 
better, this time. He did not. His dive was even 
clumsier than before, and the swirl of the water, 
instead of helping him forward, recoiled from the 
inner reef and swept him back. 

Two good yards from reaching, he lost his head 
and commenced to struggle. 

.He began to drown! 

Like all drowning people, the boy fell into a crisis 
of panic. He lost all sense of balance, all judg¬ 
ment, and beat the water frantically, trying to throw 
his arms upward—most fatal of all movements in 
the water. An eddy took him within a yard—^no 
nearer—then dragged him back. 

Choking, gasping, trying to cry for help, he went 
down! 4 

The water was not deep, and, though his head 
went under, his feet touched bottom! 

A kick sent him to the surface again, and he got 
a mouthful of air, but he was drowning and had 
no longer any hope of keeping afloat. Threshing 
violently with his arms, he sank again. 

Once, twice, a dozen times, he pushed himself to 
the surface with a kick, got a breath, and sank 
again, swallowing more and more water. His wild 
efi’orts, now, were nothing more than the uncon- 


FIGHTING THE BREAKERS 21 


scious struggling of the half-drowned, when, sink¬ 
ing again, his foot touched a large rounded mass 
of brain-coral. A last despairing foot-thrust sent 
him to the surface, but, instead of driving him 
straight upward, luckily it sloped him forward and 
shot him straight on to the inner reef. Choking, 
spluttering, the horrible feeling of drowning clutch¬ 
ing at his heart, he hooked one arm on the rock. 
He clung desperately, got his head above water, 
and with the wild strength of panic, scrambled up. 

Now, at last, he was safe, safe from the breakers! 
Only the flying spray reached him. 

Lying on the rock, half-drowned, weak from loss 
of blood and from exhaustion, Clem fainted. The 
strain had been too great. Overworked Nature 
could endure no more. 

He came to consciousness under a glaring sun, 
his skin blistering with the heat, his wounds fester¬ 
ing. His feet were terribly sore, for he had lacerated 
and cut them on living coral, beneath water-level, 
and the tiny coral polypi secrete an acrid poison. 
He was safe from the breakers, at least, but he was 
not yet ashore. 

Between him and the island lay the wide lagoon. 
The water was calm, almost glassy, for the surf 
did not reach it at all, except, perhaps, in times of 


22 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


storm. The wind had almost dropped. Yet, since 
Clem did not know how to swim, that smooth ex¬ 
panse was as impassable as the roughest water. 

Three men were standing on the beach. Three, 
then, had been saved. He shouted to them: 

I canT swim! 

He saw them turn and speak to each other, but 
not one volunteered to come to his assistance. He 
called again: 

Help! I canT swim! 

The captain shouted back: 

‘‘Help yourself! And look out for the sharks! ” 

He pointed, and Clem, looking, saw a large tri¬ 
angular fin slowly cutting the surface of the water. 

The boy shrank back from the edge of the reef. 
His situation was no less perilous than before! No 
one would help him! No one would come to rescue 
him! Had he escaped the shipwreck and the 
breakers, only to die of hunger and thirst on the 
reef, or to be eaten by a shark? 

Clem was plucky, but the last blow unnerved 
him. To have won so far! To fail, at the last! 

There was only one hope. Perhaps some of the 
wreckage might have been washed up. Perhaps 
there might be food! It was a slim chance, but, 
at least, it was a chance. 


FIGHTING THE BREAKERS 23 

He crept, cautiously, around the inner reef. 
Nearly opposite the lighthouse end of the island he 
found a splintered mass of boards and planking, one 
side and part of the roof of the cook’s deck-house 
galley. It was bobbing in the rough water between 
the reefs. 

At great risk of being snatched back into the 
channel by the swirl of the water, and after terrible 
exertion, he dragged the wreckage nearer. Still 
hanging on the hooks were two saucepans > and a 
meat-axe—^but the pots were empty and there was 
no meat for the axe to cut! 

Clem continued the search until he had made the 
entire circuit of the reef. There was no other jet¬ 
sam; neither barrel of biscuit, nor keg of water. 
If he stayed on the reef, he must starve or die of 
thirst. He must get to the island, somehow—it was 
life or death. There would be food and water at 
the lighthouse. 

The lagoon must be crossed, but how? He had 
no boat! 

Those planks, bobbing in the water between the 
reefs! He could make a raft! 

Clem scrambled back to the wreckage. Ah, it was 
easier to think of constructing a raft than to do it! 
How to fasten the planks together? He had no 


24 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

nails, no rope. There was plenty of cordage in the 
tangle on the outer reef, but he could not go back 
there! It would be death to try! 

The boards of the galley, in a measure, held to¬ 
gether. Though pulled out of shape, one side and 
part of the roof was intact. If he could drag- this 
over to the lagoon, it might hold his weight. He 
could do no more than make the attempt. 

One plank was floating free, a nail sticking out 
from the end. Reaching out with this, he managed 
to bring the wreckage closer to the reef. It was 
hard work to pull it out of water, harder still to 
drag it across the reef. The planks—jutting out at 
all angles—were extremely awkward and cumber¬ 
some, but labor counts for nothing when it is the 
only road to safety. 

Lifting and hauling, pulling at this end, pushing 
at the other, cutting his feet on the coral more and 
more, at last he got the planking over. 

Noon had passed before the wreckage slipped 
into the calm lagoon. The boy was hot, fevered, 
lame, aching with pain, faint with hunger, and his 
tongue was swollen with thirst. He must get to the 
island, or die there, on the reef. 

The fins of the sharks cruised lazily near him. It 
seemed, almost, as if the man-eaters knew! 



FIGHTING THE BREAKERS 25 

The toil was not over, yet! The wreckage lay 
to the lee of the island, and, though the wind was 
light, there was enough to make it impossible for 
him to start from where he was; the breeze would 
blow his “ raft back to the rocks. Worn out and 
desperate, he must drag the planking half-way 
round the reef until he reached the windward side 
of the island. He might launch it there, and, for¬ 
tune favoring him, the breeze might carry him 
ashore. 

The work was incredibly difficult, for the inner 
side of the reef was shallow, and the planks en¬ 
tangled themselves in the coral spurs under water 
and stuck fast at every yard. He dared not plunge 
into the water to free them, for those black fins, 
cruising near, were a sufficient warning against im¬ 
prudence. 

Pushing and pulling, using the plank with the 
projecting nail as a boat-hook, fighting against the 
wind, his feet more and more cut by the sharp 
coral, he edged the wreckage bit by bit around the 
reef. The men, ashore, watched him, but none of 
them—not even the cook, who was a gallant fel¬ 
low—would risk his life in that shark-haunted 
water. 

It took Clem three long hours to drag those planks 


26 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

around that half-mile of jagged obstacles. The 
calmness of the water, alone, was in his favor. At 
last he got the planks to the windward side of the 
island, almost opposite the wild plantation of cocoa- 
nut palms. He was almost delirious with exhaus¬ 
tion and thirst, but the very fact of his steady labor 
kept his nerves from giving way. 

The time had come to risk the perilous voyage. 
Would the wreckage hold him? 

He clambered on the planks. 

The clumsy mass, having no equilibrium of its 
own, turned half over under his weight, pitching 
him into the water. 

Panic-stricken, for fear of the sharks, he climbed 
on it anew and crouched there in fear, for the 
wreckage was uncertainly balanced, and twisted 
under him. Not until half a dozen efforts did he 
find the point at which it would support his weight. 
He drew his legs up under him, to keep them out 
of the jaws of the ever-hungry sharks, and let him¬ 
self drift, trying, from time to time, to propel his 
crude raft forward with a piece of plank used as 
an oar. This was dangerous, for every moment 
risked an overturn. 

Slowly, slowly, the wreckage drifted on. 

Would it go straight to the island, or would it get 


FIGHTING THE BREAKERS 27 

into an eddy and drift by? If the latter proved 
to be the case, all the work would have to be done 
again! 

It veered sideways under the influence of a slight 
current. 

Clem shoveled madly at the water with his plank, 
twice being nearly pitched overboard. The force 
which he could give was but slight, but it served to 
counteract the direction of the drift. 

It was late in the afternoon before the wreckage 
grounded, twenty yards from the shore. 

Clem felt the bottom with his plank; it was only 
just out of his depth, and shallowing. He watched 
and waited. The sharks, which had been swim¬ 
ming around the wreckage when he started, were, 
for the moment, out of sight. Perhaps they were 
just under water, ready for him? He must risk it! 

A light puff or two warned him that the wind 
might change and set him afloat again. 

He leapt forward, as before, went under, came up 
spluttering, touched bottom with his toes, advanced 
a yard, touched bottom again, got a toe-hold, dug 
his toes in the sand, beat the water with his arms 
like a flail, went down again, once more propelled 
himself with his toes, got to shallower water, found 
himself in his depth, fought on, got firmer footing. 


28 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


and rushed up toward the beach just as the fin of 
a shark came cutting the water toward him. 

The great man-eater had no room to turn on its 
back to seize him, and, just as the black triangle 
disappeared below the water for the shark^s fatal 
snatching rush, Clem tore up the shelving shore. 

The last of the four survivors, he was safe! 



Courtesy of U. S. Navy. 

In Memory of Gallant Comrades. 

Despite the danger from war between conflicting Chinese forces, these blueiackets left 
protecting ships in the harbor of Shanghai to pay tribute to their dead 

in Bubbling Well Cemetery. 









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CHAPTER III 


A LIGHTHOUSE MURDER 

The boy was safe, but in a terrible state. Fear 
and desperation had kept him up, so far; now, he 
fell on the sand, exhausted, done! Of the three men 
on the beach two looked toward him, but made no 
move; the cook hurried forward. 

Water! cried Clem. Water!’^ 

There ainT none! 

“ Water! 

What^s the use o^ bellowin^! I tell you, there 
ainT none.^’ 

“ The lighthouse! 

No one there.’^ 

Clem stared at him uncomprehendingly. 

Look like a boiled cod all you want to! ” The 
cook protruded a swollen tongue. ‘‘ WeTe all in the 
same boat. DonT think youVe the only one that’s 
thirsty! ’’ 

The boy gasped. 

There must be some kind of a keeper! ” 

Haul him out, then! We’ve been poundin’ an’ 


29 


30 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

yellin’ at the lighthouse for hours. There ain’t no 
one there, I tell you! ” 

But I saw the light, last night 1 ” 

“ Who’s sayin’ you didn’t? All hands saw it.” 

“Who lighted the lantern, then?” 

“ How, in the name of the magic pike, can I tell! ” 
protested the Finn. 

“ It couldn’t light itself! ” the boy persisted. 

“ Automatic light, perhaps, the skipper says. 
Go an’ ask him yourself, if you want a clout on the 
side of the head.” 

Clem didn’t. He had had enough of those on 
board the Preciosa. The mate had been of the kind 
to give them. 

“And there’s no water. Cook! ” 

“ Not enough to fill a sailmaker’s thimble! ” 

“ And no hard-tack, even? ” 

“Not a weevily crumb! ” He added grimly, but 
not unkindly, “It’s bad, boy, eh?” 

Clem dropped back on the sand. 

“ An’ the worst of it is,” went on the cook, “ that 
there ain’t no chance of rescue if this is an auto¬ 
matic light. WTiy should any craft come ’round 
here? It’s ’way off the line o’ travel. The mate 
told me so, afore that sea took him.” 

“ How did we get here, then? ” 


A LIGHTHOUSE MURDER 31 

The cook dropped his voice, though the captain 
was more than a hundred yards away. 

“ Don^t you ever say a word! But poor Jake 
said, just before we struck, that he^d seen the skip¬ 
per throw a tin box overboard. The ship^s papers, 
likely.’’ 

“You mean—^he wrecked us on purpose?” 

“ The Preciosafs first trip out! Her plates weren’t 
any thicker’n a saucepan lid. An’ if she was heavily 
insured? The skipper was part owner, too.” 

With a start, Clem remembered all the suspicious 
manoeuvres before the vessel struck. Jake’s idea 
would explain everything. The Preciosa had missed 
stays and run on the reef because the captain had 
eased the wheel, deliberately, at the wrong moment. 
The boy recalled that soft rattle of the wheel-chains. 

“He risked his own neck! ” the boy protested, 
hardly believing that it could be true. 

“He drowned three good sailormen. An’ he 
swims like a shark, himself.” 

“But that’s murder! ” 

“ ’Tain’t the first time a craft’s been run on the 
rocks for the insurance. But where I lose my 
bearin’s is his pickin’ an island with an automatic 
light. Unless he didn’t know,” the cook added, as 
an afterthought. 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


32 

He must have known. All lights are listed.^^ 

Then I don’t see his little game. But we’re in 
deep soundin’s, boy. There’s no water on this strip 
o’ sand. I’ve been all over.” 

There’s wood,” said Clem, ‘‘ and there are pots. 
We can distil fresh water.” 

‘Hn books!” came the retort. ‘‘But a ship’s 
kettle ain’t steam-tight. You ain’t got no idea how 
much cooled steam it’d take to make drinking water 
for four men! ” 

“ And no grub! ” 

“Nothin’! An’ no chance of anything cornin’ 
ashore, either. As for fishin’—there’s a plenty on 
the reefs, but the sharks would have most o’ the 
fun.” 

The boy fell silent. There was nothing more to 
be said. Suddenly he was aroused by a cry from 
the cook: 

“ Holy kraken! ” 

Raising himself on one elbow, Clem saw the skip¬ 
per running like a madman to the lighthouse, pour¬ 
ing out a torrent of oaths and shaking his fist when 
words failed him. 

On the platform of the lighthouse, a man had ap¬ 
peared ! 

The railing was not very high up, perhaps forty 


A LIGHTHOUSE MURDER 


33 

feet above ground, but the sides of the lighthouse 
were absolutely sheer. 

Clem scrambled to his feet and followed the cook, 

who was running, also. He reached just as the 

skipper stopped, for sheer loss of breath. 

After a moment’s pause, the lighthouse-keeper 

replied, in broken English: 

You zink I not hear call, Senor Capitan. Mis- 

« 

tek! I hear all zing. I see all zing. I see ship 
hit ze reef. Funny zing how ship hit ze reef, eh? 
Like zat! In fine wezzer, so! ’’ 

The Foul Fiend take your hide, you pigeon- 
livered swab I ’’ the captain shouted. “ Why didn’t 
you open? ” 

Zat is for me to zink! So, Senor Capitan. I, 
in ze lighthouse, alone. Little water. Little to eat. 
I give food, water, to four mans, zere is no wafer, 
no food, for me. Zat is so. I not give anyzing! ” 
“You’ve got to, you Dago scoundrel!” roared 
the captain. “You’ve got to help shipwrecked 
mariners! It’s the law! ” 

“ Ze law! Ze Honduras law! Laws is nozzing. 
On zis lighthouse I am ze laws. I not have food 
for four mans, not have water for four mans. For 
me, not more. Not give nozzing. Good-morning? 
Yes! ” 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


34 

With a mocking bow the half-breed lighthouse- 
keeper let himself into the chamber of the lantern, 
and began to busy himself with the trimming of the 
lamp. It was not far from sunset. Half an hour 
later, the light blazed out, and the mechanism be¬ 
gan to revolve. 

The reappearance of the keeper on the platform 
was greeted with shouts from the shipwrecked men, 
pleadings, promises, threats. The half-breed paid 
little heed. He came to the platform railing, looked 
down at the men who were suffering torture from 
hunger and thirst, grinned as though he found the 
situation amusing, then opened the trap-door in the 
platform and descended into the lighthouse without 
another word. 

The cook, wild with rage, hammered with his 
fists on the stone walls. The door was six feet above 
ground, for, in verj" bad weather, the breakers rolled 
clear above the reefs and washed over the island. 
Even if he could have reached the door, his fists 
would have been but little service, for lighthouse 
doors are usually ponderous affairs with heavy 
cross-bars screwed into sockets, to resist the shock 
of the most violent tempest. What could a weak¬ 
ened, weaponless man hope to do? 

I thought, sir,” said Qem to the captain, that 


A LIGHTHOUSE MURDER 35 

it was the law to put two men in a lighthouse, al¬ 
ways/’ 

‘‘ It is, boy,” the captain retorted. ‘‘ But, out in 
these Spanish parts, they fix it so that one man 
draws two men’s pay and two men’s rations, an’ 
he divvies with the Lighthouse Board. They’re all 
crooked! ” 

But what are we going to do, sir? ” 

The captain tinned on him. 

“You’re going to obey orders,” he thundered, 
“ ashore as well as afloat! Just now, you’re going 
to hold your tongue, or I’ll make you! ” 

Clem backed away. The skipper’s hand was a 
Heavy one. He took refuge with the cook, who was 
ready to be openly mutinous. He was an even 
bigger man than the skipper, and, like most Finns, 
a stranger to fear. 

There was little talking, and, after a while, the 
four men went to sleep, Clem and the cook together, 
while, a little distance away, were the captain and 
the fourth man, an A. B. nicknamed “ Chunk,” who 
had broken his collar-bone in crossing the reef. 
Already, between the four survivors, two parties had 
fonned. 

The sun was up when Clem awoke. The sleep 
and the night air had refreshed him a little, and 


36 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

the cook came to him with a few drops of water— 
not more than a couple of spoonfuls—at the bottom 
of a saucepan. 

Wet your tongue with this, boy! It’s all youVe 
likely to get. No! he added as the boy tried to 
snatch the pot from his hands, don’t swallow, yet. 
Keep it in your mouth as long as you can. It’ll 
keep your tongue from turnin’ black.” 

How did you get it? ” 

Distilled it, like you said. But the fire won’t 
keep alight—the wood’s too wet—an’ we’ve only got 
three more matches. An’ likely, they won’t strike. 
We’ve used up nearly all we had, gettin’ half a 
cupful.” 

“We ought to bum the lighthouse down! ” de¬ 
clared Clem indignantly. 

“Stone! ” retorted the cook succinctly. 

“ The door, then! ” 

“ A fathom above ground! * How are you goin’ to 
build a fire in the air? ” 

The boy fell silent, and, slightly refreshed by the 
few drops of water on his parched tongue, ap¬ 
proached the spot where the captain was trying to 
relight the fire with the three matches which re¬ 
mained. But, though they had been in the sun¬ 
shine, and were as dry as a chip, the matches failed 


A LIGHTHOUSE MURDER 37 

to light. They spat a spark when scratched, gave 
a tiny blue flame, and went out. 

The captain swore. 

“ I should have thought of buying a water-tight 
box in London! he stormed. 

The cook and Clem exchanged looks. Both had 
the same idea. The skipper had known, then, in 
London, that he was going to be shipwrecked. The 
remark was conclusive. 

But the guilt for the wreck was of little im¬ 
portance compared to the urgency of thirst. Clem 
had seen from the start that if an entire box of 
matches had been spent in constantly relighting a 
fire, just to give a few spoonfuls of distilled water, 
such a way of thirst-quenching was not feasible. 

He cudgeled his brains for some other plan, go¬ 
ing over in his mind all the store of sea-yarns for 
which his father had been famous. He had been 
brought up on tales of shipwreck. Suddenly, he 
looked up, overhead. 

There^s a chance! ” he cried excitedly, and ran 
forward to the captain. 

Please, sir! ” 

Well? 

‘'There are—there are cocoanuts up there! he 
stuttered. “ There might be milk in them, sir.” 



38 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

The skipper swore mightily. 

By the ribs of Jonah’s whale! That’s the first 
word of sense I’ve heard since we came ashore. 
Why didn’t some of you lubbers think of it? ” he 
said angrily, turning to the other two men, and 
utterly ignoring his own lack of observation. 

Swarm up, boy! ” 

^'Ay, ay, sir.” 

Clem could climb a rope like any sailor, but a 
cocoanut-palm is a very different matter; it is not 
rugged,' like a date-palm, but smooth, especially for 
the upper half of its height. A dozen times he tried, 
and a dozen times he failed. His feet and his arms 
had been cruelly cut and scratched by the spurs of 
coral, and it was mightily painful to try to swarm 
the tree. 

“ You’ll never get aloft that way,” put in 
“ Chunk.” “ If I hadn’t put my shoulder out, I’d 
show you how it’s done. I’ve seen niggers go up a 
palm like it was a rope-ladder. You need a long 
band o’ lashin’, like a belt, goin’ ’round yourself an’ 
the tree. Then you put your feet against the tree, 
to hold the belt taut, and you shin up by shiftin’ 
the belt hand-over-hand. Cookie’s trousers an’ 
mine, lashed together, might do the trick.” 

The four trouser legs tightly knotted together 


A LIGHTHOUSE MURDER 39 

made a band which was just the length desired, and 
Clem, under Chunk's direction, did his best to 
swarm the tree. He tried again and again, but use¬ 
lessly. The cook tried, but he was no sailor. The 
captain tried, but he was heavily built and a good 
many years had passed since he went aloft. Then 
Chunk, with splendid courage, in spite of his broken 
collar-bone, set himself to the task, but the pain 
was too great. But, at least, he showed the way. 

Despite the sores on hands and feet, Clem must 
do it! Those cocoanuts were not only the sole 
means of saving his life but those of his shipmates. 
Better to kill himself, trying, than to die of thirst 
at the bottom of the tree. 

Most exasperating of all, while the four men were 
striving under such terrible conditions to reach even 
a single green cocoanut to stop the torment of thirst, 
the lighthouse-keeper came up on his platform and 
watched them calmly. Once, when Clem slid half- 
way down the tree and fell the last few feet, bruis¬ 
ing himself not a little, the mocking laughter of the 
keeper could clearly be heard coming from the light¬ 
house platform a hundred yards away. 

The sound whipped Clem to a more desperate ef¬ 
fort. Every print of his feet left a blood-trace on 
the tree, and his hands were almost as badly cut 


40 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

and scratched. But the score of efforts he had al¬ 
ready made had begun to teach him the way to 
climb, and, at last, at long last, he found himself at 
the top, close to the bulging centre from which the 
long palm-fronds sprang. 

The sweetish milky-water juice of the cocoanut 
was the most marvellous drink the boy had ever 
tasted. He held each mouthful as long as he could, 
before swallowing it, and the relief was extraor¬ 
dinary. The terrible constriction of the salivary 
glands began to lessen and the swelling of the tongue 
diminished. Each swallow of the liquid was as 
. though life itself were being poured directly into his 
veins. 

The boy came down the palm-tree jubilantly, al¬ 
most forgetting the pain of his hands and feet. He 
had saved his shipmates from torturing thirst, per¬ 
haps from death by thirst. But the cook was the 
only one who said a grateful word to the boy. 

The pangs of thirst partly allayed, the pinch of 
hunger grew more desperate. 

“ If we only had some fire,” growled the skipper, 
we could cook some of those blamed conchs. The 
sand is full of ^em, and the niggers on the Bahamas 
just about live on ’em. But the confounded mol¬ 
luscs take a lot o’ cookin’.” 


A LIGHTHOUSE MURDER 41 

‘‘ Those things! exclaimed Chunk, pointing to a 
big highly colored shell, half the size of a human 
head, showing just imder the surface of the shallow 
water. Can they be eat? Cookin’ be blowed! 
I’m hungry enough to eat ’em raw, and I’m going’ 
to try it! ” 

The idea appealed to every one. All plunged into 
the shallow water, and each came back with a huge 
conch shell. There was no danger from the sharks, 
for the big molluscs thrive best in moderately 
shallow water. 

The shells were broken with the meat-axe and the 
writhing creatures—looking like curling pinkish 
slugs more than a foot long—^were dragged out. 
Every one started to munch his capture, though the 
shell-fish squirmed—^both in the mouth and in the 
hand—so that it was unpleasant to hold them. 
Even chopping the head end off did not stop the 
slow writhing. And they were tough, incredibly 
tough! It was like chewing on a piece of rubber. 
Yet, by long and steady mastication, some nutri¬ 
ment came out of the creatures. The tail end, curled 
up in the innermost spiral of the shell, was a little 
less tough, but even that gave a jaw-ache. 

Suppose we chop ’em up small an’ swallow the 
scouse,” suggested Chunk. That’ll keep us from 



42 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

hitchin’ our belts any tighter. I’m about cut in 
half amidships, as it is! ” 

Chopped into mincemeat, as the sailor suggested, 
it was easy to gulp down the raw mollusc without 
chewing, and the shipwrecked men made a full 
meal of it, winding up with another cocoanut apiece, 
for Clem had thrown down eight of them, and the 
cook had insisted on equal sharing. He was big 
enough to have his own way, or nothing would 
have been left for the boy. 

Much to their surprise, all the survivors were a 
great deal strengthened and nourished by this un¬ 
pleasant meal. There is a high food value in 
conks,” and, in the old days, they formed the 
staple diet of the Caribs of the West Indies. What 
was more, as soon as the stomach and intestines had 
something to work on, the gripings of hunger grew 
less. 

Again, at evening, the lighthouse-keeper reap¬ 
peared on the platform and went to his work of 
looking after the lantern. He made no reply to 
the threats of vengeance launched at him by the 
shipwrecked men, and returned to the interior of 
the lighthouse, without having said a word. 

“ Curse him! ” said the skipper, “ he’s mad be¬ 
cause we’ve found some food. I reckon he wanted 


A LIGHTHOUSE MURDER 43 

us to die, right here on the beach, and then we 
couldn't split on him for refusin' food an' water. 
He'd steal the money I've got on me, an' our clothes 
an' fixin's, too. Then he could toss our bodies to 
the sharks and who'd ever be the wiser? " 

You think that's his little game! " shouted the 
cook, furiously. ‘‘ We'll see if he gets anything o' 
mine! " 

He dashed across to where the wreckage lay, 
beach high, and dragged it by main force to the foot 
of the lighthouse. Wrenching the planks apart, he 
put one on top of the other until, by standing on 
them he could reach the bottom of the wooden 
door, and commenced to hack at the door with the 
meat-axe. The chips flew. 

Suddenly, Clem, who was behind him, cried a 
warning. 

Get away, Carl! He's got a gun! " 

The cook looked up. 

The lighthouse-keeper had just appeared on the 
platform with a revolver. He was terror-stricken 
at the idea that the four enraged men might break 
in. They would beat him nearly to death, if they 
did not kill him, that he knew. 

Without a word, without an instant's hesitation, 
before the cook could jump down from the pile of 


44 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

planks, the half-breed fired three shots in rapid suc¬ 
cession/ 

The cook fell with a groan. 

Zat is better,^' said the keeper, maliciously. 
“ Zere is only zree, now, to eat ze cocoanuts. If you 
like, I make only two. Zere is plenty cartridges! 

The captain and Chunk retreated, out of gun¬ 
shot, but Clem rushed forward to his friend’s side. 

“He’s got me! ” the cook gasped out. “Clear 
out, boy—she’ll shoot! Helsingfors—tell-” 

He fell back, breathing stertorously. 

Clem stayed by him, to get the dying man’s last 
message should he recover consciousness, but Carl 
died during the night, victim of a dastardly mur¬ 
der, done by a man whose first duty it was to help 
sailors in distress. 

* This is literally and exactly what happened. I was there. 

F. R-W. 



CHAPTER IV 


A COWARDLY RESCUE 

After the murder of the cook, the three survivors 
of the Preciosa kept strictly away from the light¬ 
house, for the keeper never came on the platform 
without his gun. This seemed a useless precaution 
on his part, for the three castaways had no means 
of getting into the building in order to revenge 
their comrade, but as they were to find out the half- 
breed had evil plans of his own. 

Next morning, when Clem was half-way up a 
cocoanut palm, to secure the day^s supply of 
drink,^’ he heard three pistol shots ring out, one 
after the other, and a bullet whistled close to him. 
He looked around, startled. 

The lighthouse-keeper was on the platform, shoot¬ 
ing at him! 

The half-breed^s intention was clear. He did not 
want the survivors to get the cocoanuts or any¬ 
thing else to quench their thirst. He wanted them 
to die of thirst, right there on the beach, or, at least, 
to become so weakened that it would be safe for 
him to come out of the lighthouse and shoot them 

45 


46 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

without any fear for himself. Their deaths were 
necessary for his safety. Unless he killed the rest 
of the crew of the Preciosa, some day they might be 
rescued and they might inform the authorities, 
somewhere, of the murder of the cook. 

Again shots rang out. 

But a revolver is not a rifle, and is very far from 
being an exact weapon at a range of a hundred 
yards. At the first shot, moreover, Clem had swung 
round to put the trunk of the tree between himself 
and his would-be murderer. Thus protected, he 
swarrned down the tree as fast as he could. 

We’ll have to wait till dark, sir,” he said to the 
captain. 

The only response was a storm of oaths and an 
order to go up the tree again. But Clem refused, 
pointblank, and ducked when the skipper let drive 
with a heavy fist. Chunk intervened, and, since 
the skipper had reasons of his own for wanting to 
keep the sailor on friendly terms, he let the boy 
alone. 

The shots continued at random from time to time, 
and each of the three survivors hid behind a tree. 
The range was far too great for any exact revolver¬ 
shooting, but a chance bullet might happen to hit. 
Had the lighthouse-keeper had the courage of a rat 


A COWARDLY RESCUE 


47 

he could have attacked the three and shot them 
down at will, but his cowardice was extreme. 

That night, before moonrise, Clem climbed two 
trees and threw down a supply of nuts, while the 
captain and Chunk secured enough conchs for the 
next day. A watch was kept all night, one man 
staying awake while the others slept. It was not 
safe for all to sleep, for the lighthouse-keeper might 
creep upon them unawares, and he, and he alone, 
had a firearm. Half-breed as he was, the coward 
streak in him kept him from a frank attack, even 
against two unarmed men—one of them with a 
broken shoulder—and a boy, but he would jump at 
a chance to murder sleeping men. 

On the tenth day after the wreck, a fishing-boat 
was sighted approaching the island. The lighthouse- 
keeper had been on the watch all morning, and, as 
soon as the sail hove in sight, he ran up a flag. 

Do you suppose theyTe coming for us, sir? ” 
queried Clem. 

How^d they know weYe Here? There’s no wire¬ 
less outfit on the island,” the captain answered. 

That’s the monthly supply boat for the lighthouse, 
likely.” 

The three survivors watched the approaching 
boat with unbounded hope and relief. At last there 



48 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

would be food and water. Conks and cocoanut 
milk, although they are sufficiently nourishing to 
keep famine away, become a stomach-wearying and 
disgusting food after a few days of the regime, and 
all three men were suffering a good deal of pain. 
Clem had become so weak that he could climb a 
palm-tree only with the greatest difficulty. 

The captain of the fishing-boat, evidently 
thoroughly acquainted with the local waters, 
dropped anchor in shallow soundings some little 
distance away from the reef, and a small skiff put 
out from the smack, carrying a cask qf water and 
several boxes of provisions. It shot through a nar¬ 
row opening in the circular reef wall, crossed the 
channel, was eased over the inner reef, and slipped 
into the lagoon. As soon as the boat came near, 
the door of the lighthouse opened, a short rope- 
ladder was dropped, and the lighthouse-keeper came 
out, gun in hand. 

As the provision boat rasped on the beach, the 
three survivors ran forward to hail the boatmen. 
The lighthouse-keeper, cold-bloodedly, turned and 
fired at them. The shot was not only a warning to 
the castaways, it was also a notification to the in¬ 
coming boatmen that there was trouble on the 
island. 


A COWARDLY RESCUE 


49 

The captain filled the air with curses. It was 
evident that the lighthouse-keeper, by reason of his 
gun, would have the chance to tell the story of his 
treatment of the castaways after his own fashion, 
and a Honduran half-breed has little respect for the 
truth. 

Moreover, he would not hesitate to voice his sus¬ 
picions that the barquentine had been deliberately 
run on the reefs. The captain knew how sailormen, 
the world over, regard a skipper of that order! 
Lynching is considered a natural consequence of 
such villainy. 

The stores were duly landed on the beach and 
carried to the lighthouse, the half-breed talking flu¬ 
ently and gesticulating wildly. He pointed to the 
axe-strokes which* had been made in the door as a 
proof that he had been attacked, and then led the 
fishermen to the body of the cook. The body had 
been dragged away from before the door of the light¬ 
house, two nights earlier, and the hosts of crabs 
and sand-hoppers had left little more than a half- 
clothed skeleton. 

To the fishermen, it was clear that the survivors 
of the wreck had tried to storm the lighthouse, and 
that the keeper had only fired in self-defense. As 
for the half-breed^s refusal to give food and water 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


50 

to the starving men, why, the fishermen would prob¬ 
ably have done the same. 

After a long conversation, the three men who 
had brought the stores, accompanied by the light¬ 
house-keeper, advanced toward the cocoanut grove 
to which the castaways had retired when the half- 
breed began shooting. Two of them had revolvers. 
As the odds were four to three, and the castaways 
were weak and ill, besides being unarmed, the Hon¬ 
durans plucked up enough courage to approach the 
white men. 

Shall we rush ’em, sir? We’ve got our sheath- 
knives,” suggested Chunk. 

'^No use. They’d shoot,” answered the captain, 
who feared for his own skin. Besides, we want 
to get to London. Remember what I told you! ” 
Chunk nodded, much to Clem’s surprise. Evi¬ 
dently there was a secret compact between the two 
of which the boy had no knowledge. 

The fishermen came nearer, and the lighthouse- 
keeper, who was the only one who spoke English, 
took the word. 

You all want go ashore, I zink? Good! Ze price 
is zousand pesos, each. You pay? ” 

You’ve got to take us for nothing, you swabs! ” 
the captain retorted. The law requires you to pick 


A COWARDLY RESCUE 


51 

up shipwrecked men. If youVe been to any ex¬ 
pense, you can get repayment from the nearest Con¬ 
sul. Translate that to them, you spot-o’-grease! ” 
The half-breed did so, and the fishermen replied, 
with indignant gestures, in an incomprehensible 
Spanish patois. 

They say ze same zing as me! ” The lighthouse- 
keeper laughed. Ze say ze pesos is ze law, ze only 
law. You not pay, you stay here anozzer monz. I 
zink after four more weeks of conks and cocoanuts, 
you will zink it is good to pay. Zis is ze only boat 
zat comes to zis island—except when a Senor Cap- 
itan has ze little ideas of his own about where his 
ship is to go! ” 

Idl pay, then, if I have to, you pirates! But 
look out for yourselves when I get to Belize! YouT 
see what Til do! ” 

You will say nozzing at Belize, Senor Capitan, 
nozzing! For one zing, you do not want ze throat 
cut. For anozzer zing, if you talk, I talk, too. You 
say I shoot one mans—it is ze self-defense. I show 
ze door hit wiz ze axe. My friends see it. It is so? ” 
The fishermen nodded. 

But I say somezing, too. I say you, Senor Cap¬ 
tain, you drown three mans. I see ze ship go on ze 
rocks in ze very funny way. I see all. If I talk, I 



52 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

zink ze Board of Trade not like zat very much? 
Take away certificate, yes? 

He translated this for the benefit of his country¬ 
men, and the boatmen grinned. To have these 
white men absolutely at their mercy was rare sport 
for them. 

“ You beach-comber! You sand-louse! You son 
of a carrion-eating land-crab! You-the cap¬ 

tain launched into a masterly array of epithets 
which did not stop until he lacked breath. 

When he had finished, the lighthouse-keeper, who 
had carefully kept the skipper covered with his gun 
during the tirade, continued calmly: 

You pay anozzer zousand pesos, too; five hun¬ 
dred for ze man, and five hundred for ze boy.’’ 

You’re a band of blood-sucking pirates! ” the 
skipper roared, but he knew that he was caught in 
a trap. The lighthouse-keeper was right. The reef 
was off the beaten track and no ships came near it. 
The captain had taken care of that. Then he turned 
to Chunk: 

‘‘ You agreed to what we said before? ” 

Ay, ay, sir. I’ll stand by you, Cap’n, when we 
get to London. Foc’s’le word! ” 

The skipper nodded agreement and turned sharply 
to Clem. 



A COWARDLY RESCUE 53 

Listen, boy! he said curtly. '' I want to see if 
you've got any sense! See if you can get this clearly 
into your head! The Preciosa ran on the reefs in 
the middle of the night, in a bad storm, after two 
days of violent weather. Do you understand? " 

“ But, sir, it was- 

“ It was soon after midnight," the skipper inter¬ 
rupted, very pointedly, eight bells of the second 
watch. There was a full gale an' the spray was fly¬ 
ing so high that no one saw Nine Quays Light. You 
were at the wheel yourself, and you saw nothing. If 
you can remember that little point, long enough to 
be able to tell it, just that way, to Lloyd's, when we 
get back, there's twenty pounds in your pocket, and 
I'll pay, right now, the flve hundred pesos which 
these land-sharks are asking.” 

And if not, sir? ” 

“ Then I don't pay 'em, and you stay Here till you 
rot! ” 

But the Preciosa didn't run on the reef in a 
storm! ” the boy burst out. It was fine weather, 
and you ran her on! Jake said he saw you throw 
the ship's papers overboard! ” 

Nothing could have been more imprudent than 
this statement at such a time! But Clem was in¬ 
dignant at this effort to bribe him to be a lying wit- 



54 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

ness in order that the insurance money might be 
collected. 

The skipper^s eyes narrowed. He had not sus¬ 
pected that any one would guess what was in the 
box he had thrown overboard, and Clem certainly 
had put him in a worse position than he was before, 
by blurting out these suspicions in the presence of 
Chunk and the lighthouse-keeper. 

Chunk, too, looked at the boy askance. The skip¬ 
per had promised him a share of the insurance 
money, for, in order to collect it from the under¬ 
writers, it was necessary to have a witness. If Clem 
should get ashore and tell the truth. Chunk would 
lose the fat little sum which the skipper had offered 
him, and on which he counted to have a riotous 
spree. 

Think a minute,’^ the captain went on per¬ 
suasively, for his case before the Board of Trade 
would be much stronger if he could produce two 
witnesses, the sole survivors of the wreck, if you 
can just make up your mind to remember what IVe 
told you, like Chunk is doing, there^s more money 
waiting for you than you can get in a dozen voyages. 
If you don’t, why, you can go on eating conks and 
cocoanuts for another month—if they last so long— 
and then you can get off with the provision boat 


A COWARDLY RESCUE 55 

next trip, provided youVe got the five hundred 
pesos, of course. There’s your choice! ” 

Clem stood silent. He was not hesitating, but 
the situation was a perilous one. 

The half-breed had been listening carefully, for 
he was the only one of the Hondurans who was able 
to follow the skipper’s arguments, and he had his 
own interests at stake. 

“ Ze Senor Capitan is right,” he agreed, for he 
had no desire to keep the boy on Nine Quays Island. 
He knew that the boy owed him a deep and bitter 
grudge for the murder of the cook and it was not 
hard to guess that Clem would lose no chance to 
pay it off. 

Ze Senor Capitan is right 1 He will say to ze 
Board of Trade zat ze cook is drowned on ze rocks, 
like all ze ozzer mans—zat means zere will be no 
trouble for me! I will write paper to say I see 
barquentine go on ze rocks in ze middle of ze night 
in a bad storm, oh! ze worst storm of ze season, if 
you like. Zat means zere will be no trouble for ze 
Senor Capitan. All zat is good. We say ze same 
zing. You say ze same zing. All is good! ” 

I won’t do it! ” declared Clem, defiantly. He 
realized that he had gone too far and that he ought 
to have held his tongue, instead of revealing to the 


c6 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

skipper that the guilty secret was suspected, but, 
now that he had come out boldly, he would not go 
back on his word. I’m an American,” he went on, 
and you can bet that I’m going to tell the whole 
story to the first American Consul I see.” 

There was a moment’s murmuring, as the keeper 
translated these words, but Clem, in his disgust of 
the sailor’s treacherous support of the wrecker cap¬ 
tain, broke out again: * 

It’s a dirty business, and I shouldn’t have 
thought it of you. Chunk. And, Cap’n, I wouldnT 
trust him, either. He’ll probably double-cross you, 
too. He’ll tell your story, likely, the way you want 
him to, get your money, and, as soon as your back 
is turned, he’ll go to the Insurance Company and 
offer to split on you for a second reward. He’ll get 
two lots of money out of it, and you’ll be broken, 
lose your certificate, and the insurance money be¬ 
sides.” 

As this was exactly what the sailor had in mind, 
he was furious that the boy should sow mistrust of 
him in the skipper’s thoughts. Drawing his sheath- 
knife, he rushed forward: 

You won’t do any more talking, anyhow! ” 

The skipper dealt him a blow which sent him stag¬ 
gering back. 


A COWARDLY RESCUE 


57 

There’s been enough o’ that sort o’ thing, al¬ 
ready! Get back, Chunk, and put up that knife! 
There’s all kinds of fools in the world, and the boy, 
here, is one kind. But that’s no reason for scrag- 
gin’ him, if he can be kept quiet some other way. 
There’s no need to send a man to Davy Jones’ locker 
unless he obstructs the channel! Once more, boy! 
Will you listen to reason? ” 

No, sir! ” said Clem stoutly. “ I canT! If what 
I can’t help thinking is true, then Claude and two 
other men were drowned just to put some money in 
your pocket, and I only just escaped, myself. You 
want me to hush that up! Then this half-breed 
murders Carl, and you want me to cover up that 
crime, too! Four murders! And what for? Just to 
swindle an insurance company! Excuse me, sir, 
perhaps I oughtn’t to be saying all this, but that’s 
the way I feel. Why, I could never look Father in 
the eyes again, if I did a thing like that! 

The skipper shrugged his shoulders. 

A shipwreck isn’t the time for Holy Joe stuff,” 
he retorted. Leave that for the sky-pilots, ashore. 
But, if you won’t, you won’t. Leave your bones on 
this coral key, if you want to. But don’t say I 
didn’t give you your chance! Come, Chunk! ” 

He walked out of the palm grove, the sailor fol- 


58 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

lowing, and so along to the shore where the fisher- 
man^s boat was waiting. 

The last time, boy! ” 

For a few seconds, the realization that he was to 
be marooned, practically alone, on that island, made 
Clem waver. The skipper and Chunk got into the 
boat. The men lay on their oars and waited for 
his answer. 

Better give your word, boy, and come! ” the 
skipper urged. What’s a tall yarn, more or less? 
’Tain’t as if you were goin’ to do anybody any harm. 
Tollin’ the truth won’t float the old craft again! ” 
This was a temptation, but the thought of his 
Massachusetts home came to the boy, and his back 
stiffened. 

^‘No! ” he said. ^H’ll be hanged if I do! No! 
I’ll run straight, anyhow! ” 

“That’s flnal, eh? Well, more fool you! Stay, 
then! ” 

With a gesture, the skipper abandoned him to his 
fate, and with jeering laughs at his “ridiculous 
honesty,” the boatmen pulled away. 

The lighthouse-keeper watched the departure of 
the boat with a corner of his eye, but he did not let 
Clem out of his sight, his gun always in his hand. 
Bidding him stand his ground and not advance a 


A COWARDLY RESCUE 


59 

step if he did not want to be shot, the half-breed 
walked backwards toward the lighthouse, scrambled 
up the rope ladder, pulled up the ladder after him, 
and slammed the door. 

Clem was marooned on the island, without food 
or drink, alone except for a cowardly enemy, waiting 
for him with a gun. 


CHAPTER V 


THE BLUEJACKETS COME 

Standing on the beach, Clem watched the little 
boat shoot over the reefs out to sea. He saw the 
crew of the fishing-smack lift anchor and set sail, 
and, in spite of himself, his heart sank and he had 
to fight down a black depression. 

After all, it was entirely due to his own wilfulness 
that he was still on the island, marooned, when he 
might have been on that fishing-craft, sailing to 
safety. He realized the danger of his position, as 
well as his loneliness and the lack of food, for, hav¬ 
ing openly declared that he intended to tell the truth 
about the murder of Carl, it was strongly to the 
lighthouse-keeper’s interest to put him out of the 
way. 

Yet, in spite of everything, Clem doubted whether 
the half-breed would actually do it. It would be 
far too dangerous. The skipper, though bent on 
getting the insurance money for the loss of the ship, 
had no special grudge against Clem, even though he 
had refused to give false testimony. The boy felt 
sure that, as soon as the captain was well on his way 

6o 


THE BLUEJACKETS COME 6i 
toward London so that it would be impossible for 

• I 

the boy to reach there in time to appear before the 
Board of Trade and tell a contradictory story, some¬ 
how he would let it be known that there was an 
American boy marooned on Nine Quays Island, off 
the coast of Honduras. 

Should rescuers come, and find no trace of him, 
it would look ugly for the lighthouse-keeper, espe¬ 
cially if—as the boy shrewdly suspected—the half- 
breed already had a bad record. He thought it more 
likely that the keeper would try to make friends. 

The boy’s guess was the right one. That after¬ 
noon, just before the time of trimming the light, 
the half-breed came on the platform, and called. 

Come here, boy! Zero is some zings I will tell 
you, yes? ” 

‘‘ And get a bullet through me! Thanks! ” 

“ No, no! Zere is no gun. Ze pistol is below. 1 
not can shout so. Come! We talk.” 

No. I don’t trust you.” 

^‘Zat is foolish! You are not trying to break 
down ze door with ze axe! I will help you. I will 
give you water and to eat. Can help one mans, 
not help four.” 

‘‘Put the water and the food at the bottom of 
the lighthouse, then. I’ll come and get it during the 


62 WITH THE u. S. NAVY 

night. But I’m not anxious to get in too close reach 
of that gun.” 

I do zat. To-morrow we talk.” 

True to his word, the lighthouse-keeper put a can 
of water and some ships’ biscuits at the foot of the 
lighthouse, and, during the night, Clem crept up 
noiselessly and took the provisions away. He 
munched the biscuit fearlessly, but was afraid to 
drink the water, lest it should be poisoned. And 
yet—where would the lighthouse-keeper get any 
poison? 

The following morning, the lighthouse-keeper 
again wanted to open conversation, but Clem pru¬ 
dently kept out of sight behind a tree, and the talk 
was little more than a series of long-range shouts. 

^‘You promise you say nozzing about ze cook! 
Zen I will give you water and food. I will make ze 
signal of distress, too, if you want.” 

I won’t promise anything. I’ve stuck it out 
here ten days, already. I can stick it out another 
month—if no one comes before then—and if you 
don’t give me food and water, now that I know 
you’ve got plenty, why, it’ll be all the worse for 
you! That’s all I’ve got to say! ” 

He sipped the water suspiciously but suffered no 
evil effects, so, a couple of hours later, he gulped a 


THE BLUEJACKETS COME 63 

little of it down, and, at last, ventured on a real 
drink. It did him no harm, but he accepted the 
next night^s supply with equal caution. 

After that, at irregular intervals, he found some 
water and some biscuit at the foot of the lighthouse. 
There was not much, not enough to keep him sup¬ 
plied, merely enough to tantalize the appetite and 
to give a taste for more. But it was a change from 
the eternal conks ” and cocoanuts. 

So passed eight days more. 

Then, toward noon of the ninth day, a long slim 
four-funnelled boat appeared on the horizon, smoke 
pouring out of her funnels; she steamed toward the 
island at a speed which seemed incredible. Clem, 
though ignorant of all navy matters, did not need 
to be told that this vessel was some kind of a war¬ 
ship, though of what class, and of what nation, he 
could not teU. One thing he could see for himself, 
though, and that was that she was coming like a 
hurricane. 

Soon, Clem could see the Stars and Stripes flying. 
He cheered wildly. 

The lighthouse-keeper, from his post on the plat¬ 
form, looked down at the boy sourly, and thanked 
his stars that, a couple of nights before, he had 
thrown what remained of the body of the cook 


64 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

into the sea. Should rescuers reach the shore, the 
boy might talk, but, at least, he would not be able 
to show any actual proof for his story. 

From the destroyer—for such she proved to be— 
a line of flags broke out and ran crisply up to the 
signal yard-arm. There was not a doubt of it, the 
warship was coming straight to the island, and call¬ 
ing to the lighthouse to reply. 

It is not healthy to refuse to answer that wicked¬ 
looking ferret of the seas—a United States Navy 
destroyer. For once in his life, the lighthouse- 
keeper moved fast. From the short flagstaff which 
projected from the platform, he sent up an answer¬ 
ing signal. Not knowing the International Code, 
Clem had no idea what the flags meant. 

Under the direct view of the officers of the de¬ 
stroyer, Clem felt his fear of the lighthouse-keeper 
vanish like the periscope of a submarine which has 
sighted a sea-plane laden with depth-bombs.- He 
left the protecting shelter of the cocoanut grove and 
came frankly down to the beach, staring with all his 
might as that slim grey craft of battle venom, with 
her hooded ports and the muzzles of her long-bar¬ 
relled guns pointing at the island. 

The boy chuckled at the thought that the de¬ 
stroyer could blow that lighthouse into smithereens 



THE BLUEJACKETS COME 65 

in a few seconds if her ofi&cers wished, and send the 
keeper to that place where murderers of innocent 
men receive an especially hot welcome. It seemed 
to Clem that if he were in the lighthouse-keeper’s 
shoes, his knees might be a little shaky. 

Presently the destroyer lay to, and, almost instan¬ 
taneously, a boat was lowered away and shot out 
for the beach, heading in the direction where the 
battered hull of the Preciosa still showed above the 
surface of the water. 

Instantly the boy saw the danger. That was the 
worst bit of the reef. The opening in the coral bar¬ 
rier was on the other side, where the fishing-schooner 
had dropped anchor. If the warship’s small boat 
tried to reach the island in the direction she was 
going, no matter how spry the bluejackets might 
be, she would be swamped and all hands thrown to 
the sharks. 

Clem shouted madly, forgetting that the noise of 
the breakers would drown all cries, even if he had 
a voice like a full-grown fog-horn, but the wild 
wavings of his arms attracted the attention of the 
senior watch-ofiicer who had been sent with the boat. 
This was rather an unusual procedure, for a boat¬ 
swain’s mate—either chief or first-class—is generally 
put in charge of a small landing party. 



66 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


The navy men backed water. One of them, in the 
bow, semaphored with his arms, asking questions. 
Not knowing the Code, or but very slightly remem¬ 
bering what he had learned from a Boy Scout com¬ 
panion, Clem did not trust himself to reply, fearing 
to give wrong signs. He waved and pointed, as best 
he could, and, in response to his gestures, the boat 
made her way down slowly, outside the reef. 

In his excitement, Clem had entirely forgotten the 
lighthouse-keeper, and his run down the beach to 
guide the incoming boat had brought him within 
easy pistol range. He was awakened to the fact by 
the report of a shot. The bullet spit up the sand 
a few feet ahead of him. 

The half-breed was in a fury of panic. Although 
he knew that the shot would be seen by the navy 
men, he wanted to kill the boy and to prevent his 
talking before anybody could get ashore. If he 
could keep Clem from revealing the entrance to the 
reefs, there was a great chance that the boat could 
not get to the beach at all. The half-breed had been 
watching eagerly and hopefully to see the destroy- 
er^s boat smash to splinters on the reefs and to watch 
the bluejackets being eaten by the sharks. 

With Clem dead, he could throw the boy’s body 
into the lagoon, and the man-eaters would see to it 


THE BLUEJACKETS COME 67 

that there was nothing left. Then he could tell any 
lie that came handy or play ignorance of the whole 
affair, and thus, though there might be heavy and 
ugly circumstantial evidence against him, there 
would be no definite proof. 

He fired a second time, but Clem had raced on, 
and was getting out of pistol range. The second shot 
missed, also. 

The warship^s boat, cautiously edging her way 
outside the reef, followed the boy’s indications. No 
one on board her needed to be told of the danger ^ 
of that surf. A coral reef is just about the nastiest 
thing there is. 

The two shots had been seen from the boat, and 
the men were wild to get in. As Clem found out 
afterward, half the men aboard had clamored to 
be allowed to swim ashore, in spite of the sharks, 
so as to get into action quicker. The officer had to 
speak sharply to keep them inboard. 

Ah! There was the opening, at last! 

Clem stood still, both arms held high in air, and 
watched, anxiously. The boat crept in, cautiously, 
got on a breaker, rose over the reef into the chan¬ 
nel, and swung steady on backed oars. It was a 
tough job to ease her over the inner reef into the 
lagoon. It was managed without a scratch on her 


68 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

paint, however, and a dozen powerful strokes shot 
her across the calm water. Four sailors jumped over 
the side, ran her up high and dry, and stood to at¬ 
tention as the lieutenant and surgeon stepped out. 
Clem came running as fast as his festered feet would 
let him. 

Seeing one of the men salute, as the ofl&cer spoke 
to him, Clem tried to do the same as he came up, 
but it was far from being the snappy naval salute. 
After a nineteen days’ diet of conks and cocoanuts, 
he had little energy left. He was a pitiable sight, 
too: burned, blistered, his face haggard, his feet 
covered with sores, his arms and legs as thin as 
sticks, and his stomach bloated like that of a famine 
victim. 

Did I see shooting? ” the naval officer asked 
sharply. 

'^Yes, sir,” replied Clem, hastily. ‘'The light- 
house-keeper wanted to shoot me so.as to keep me 
from showing you the way through those dangerous 
reefs.” 

“ So! We’ll look after him, presently. Your case, 
first. Doctor, how about it? ” 

The naval surgeon cast a quick look at the boy. 

“Starving! ” was his prompt diagnosis. “Hand 
me that beef-tea, one of you! Here, lad, take a 


THE BLUEJACKETS COME 69 

mouthful or two of that. Go easy at it. Good, 
eh?’’ 

Clem choked on the drink. His nerves were be¬ 
ginning to give way from the sudden relief. The 
doctor noticed it. 

That’s all right. Swallow slowly. We’ll fix you 
up, on board.” 

Do you feel able to tell us how you got here? ” 
the lieutenant asked, after the boy had taken a few 
swallows. 

Clem braced up, ashamed of the fact that his 
weakness and nerve strain made him feel as though 
he wanted to cry. 

Yes, sir. I’ll be glad to tell the whole story, be¬ 
fore the keeper, up there, succeeds in getting a bul¬ 
let into me. This is the fourth time he’s tried. You 
see, sir, the ship I was on was run on the rocks 
for the insurance.” 

How do you know? ” the officer snapped back. 

Well—the ship’s papers were thrown overboard, 
anyhow.” 

Did the captain tell you he had done so? ” 

^^No, sir; not exactly.” 

Then how do you know they were? ” 

Jake—one of the crew, sir, he’s drowned—told 
the cook who told me.” 


70 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

Boy/^ said the lieutenant sternly, youVe been 
through a hard time, and you’ve got reason, per¬ 
haps, for having your nerves on edge. I’ll admit 
that. But when I ask you to tell what happened, 
I want to hear the facts, only, not what you suppose 
or any one else supposes. Is that clear? ” 

“ Quite, sir. I beg pardon. I’ll try,” and Clem, 
perhaps for the first time in his life compelled to re¬ 
port a happening concisely and clearly, told the 
story of the wreck of the Preciosa, of the loss of 
three men of the crew, of the manner of life of the 
survivors on Nine Quays Island, of the murder of 
the cook by the lighthouse-keeper, of the coming of 
the provision boat, and of his abandonment by the 
skipper because he refused to give false testimony 
concerning the wreck before the Board of Trade in 
London, the Preciosa being under English register. 

Good,” said the officer, that sounds straight 
enough. You’ll repeat that to the commander, on 
board, and probably we can spoil your captain’s 
little game. He seems to .have overlooked that 
there’s such a thing as the wireless and the cable. 
Now, for this lighthouse-keeper! Get him down 
here, Johnson! ” 

The boatswain’s mate shouted, but there was no 
reply. On further orders, the men hammered on the 


THE BLUEJACKETS COME 71 

lighthouse door with a boat-hook. Still there was 
no answer from within. 

Shell the lighthouse down, sir! suggested Clem, 
recklessly. 

At this unasked offer of an opinion, the officer 
whirled angrily on the boy, forgetting for a moment 
that the castaway was not a navy man. Then, re¬ 
membering that Clem was young, only just at the 
lowest possible limit of navy age, and not an en¬ 
listed man, he relaxed a little. 

YouTe not in the Navy, boy, or you wouldn’t 
talk so foolishly,” he said, reprovingly. A light¬ 
house is for the protection of the mariners of all 
nations. A light which does not burn, even for a 
single night, is a marine calamity. And you suggest 
that we should shell it! Think, boy, think, before 
you talk so fast! What is more, that light is under 
the jurisdiction of the Honduras Government. 
Don’t you see that shelling it would be an act of 
war? ” 

Clem colored to the roots of his hair. 

I—I beg your pardon, sir. I—I didn’t think.” 

You certainly didn’t! If you were in the Navy, 
lad, you’d have to learn to think.” 

“ I was going into the Navy,” said the boy, re¬ 
gretfully. I intended to, always.” 


72 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

How do you mean you were going into the 
Navy? ” 

‘‘ Annapolis, sir.” 

^^Eh! How?” 

Our senator promised me a nomination, sir.” 

‘‘ Well—and then? ” 

“ Father got ruined, and fell sick. So I had to get 
into the Merchant Marine.” 

Been through grammar school? ” 

Second year high, sir.” 

^^H’m! How long have you been at sea?” 

Only a year and a half, sir. But I’ve been try¬ 
ing to study navigation.” 

On windjammers? ” 

Yes, sir.” 

“ That’s not a bad training for the Navy, as a 
starter. But why should you give up hopes of An¬ 
napolis? Do you know that there are a hundred 
nominations to Annapolis, every year, from the en¬ 
listed men? ” 

No! Are there, sir? ” 

Yes. The Navy believes in its enlisted men. 
You have a talk about it with some of the petty 
officers on board, and then come and see me some 
time. Now for this lighthouse-keeper. He won’t 
answer, Johnson?” 


THE BLUEJACKETS COME 73 

“ No, sir. But he must be there, sir, because he 
answered our signals.’^ 

‘‘ Well, if he won’t open the door, we haven’t the 
right to break it in, without special instructions. 
He can’t run away from here, that’s sure. Tumble 
in, boys. Here, two of you help the lad! ” 

A couple of husky bluejackets picked Clem up 
and lifted him into the boat with every care. 

I noticed, sir,” put in the boy, as he seated him¬ 
self on one of the thwarts, that, when going out, 
the provision boat bore away more to the starboard 
than where you came in.” 

“So! Good! Give way, men. Watch out, there, 
in the bow! ” 

The surf was running faMy heavily, but Navy 
men understand handling a boat as well as any fish¬ 
ermen—which is saying a good deal—and they have 
spirit and discipline besides. It was a perilous pas¬ 
sage, but, with the boatswain’s mate in the bow and 
the lieutenant beside the coxswain, the dangerous 
exit was passed with surprising dexterity. 

Even that was nothing to the precision with which 
the boat was brought alongside the destroyer and 
hoisted on board. To Clem, used to the bungling 
fashion of merchant ships, the feat seemed like 


magic. 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


74 

In less time than he could think of it, Clem found 
himself, for the first time in his life, aboard a vessel 
of the United States Navy. Unlike as the destroyer 
was to any ship on which he had been before, he felt 
at home at once. And the men—Americans all— 
yes, they would be friends and comrades. Only—a 
lump came in the boy’s throat at the memory of the 
death of Claude. 



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Courtesy of U. S. Navy. 

Honor to Heroes of a Friendly Nation. 

American bluejackets laying wreaths on Great Britain’s 
Memorial to her war dead. 










CHAPTER VI 


ROMANCES OF DARING 

Clem^s first day on board the destroyer was not 
especially exciting. He took it out mainly in food 
and sleep, for the surgeon, after he got a good chance 
to look the boy over, was not at all satisfied with 
his condition. He said, bluntly, that it would take 
a fortnight of Navy “ chow ” to put him on his feet 
again. As the destroyer was on cruise and not ex¬ 
pected to put into a base port for a couple of weeks, 
this fitted in admirably. A radio had been sent to 
Fleet Headquarters and permission granted for Clem 
to stay on board. 

The commander came to the sick-bay to see him 
next day, and Clem told his story all over again, 
in even greater detail, being careful, this time, to 
tell only what he knew. The commander ques¬ 
tioned him closely, however, and in the questioning, 
the whole truth came out. 

‘‘Your name’s Derry, you say?” 

“Yes, sir; Clem Derry.” 

“ Well, Derry, you’ve done just about what a man 
ought to do. Pity you’re not in the Navy. A young 

75 


76 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

fellow who’ll let himself be marooned rather than 
tell a lie is the sort of American we want.” 

Clem flushed red and stammered a word of thanks. 
The commander watched him with a friendly smile; 
he was a youngish man, himself. 

“ Please, sir-” began the boy, and stopped. 

What is it, Derry? ” 

“ Please, sir—could I stay on board here? ” 

How?” 

Could I ship on board this craft? ” 

I suppose you mean that you want to join the 
Navy? ” 

Clem hesitated. 

I—I don’t know about that, sir.” 

‘‘You don’t know! ” 

“ No, sir. I was going to be an ofiicer, sir, not an 
enlisted man. That’s why I went into the Merchant 
Marine. I could get a master’s certificate, there, 
as soon as I was old enough, and then I’d be aft in¬ 
stead of forrard.” 

“ If you’ve really got the stuff in you, Derry,” said 
the commander, slowly, “ you can get a nomination 
from the ranks. I believe Lieutenant Hurd told 
you so, did he not? ” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

“ I don’t want to hold out any false hopes, Derry. 



ROMANCES OF DARING 77 

There are only a hundred appointments, and there 
are over a thousand men, every year, who want to 
make it. Entrance to Annapolis is very difficult and 
requires not only a great deal of study, but also a 
great deal of moral strength to do book-work when 
your comrades may be taking it easy. Yet a hun¬ 
dred men do it every year.’’ 

“ And those who fail, sir? ” 

They can either stay in the Navy, and work up 
to be chief petty officers, or even warrant officers, 
or, at the end of the term of their enlistment, they 
can leave the Navy and take up civil life. If you 
still had a hankering for the Merchant Service at 
the end of your term, four years in the Navy with a 
good record would always be a help to you to get 
a good ship.” 

And could I stay on this craft, sir? ” 

“ Why do you want to stay with us? ” 

I like it ; I mean, sir, I think I should like it.” 
I couldn’t promise you that. Nor would it be a 
good thing for you, Derry. If you should decide to 
join the Navy and to make a try for Annapolis, 
you’ll find that the more different kinds of ships you 
go in and the more different kinds of work you do, 
the more experience you’ll have. The Navy is not 
like the Merchant Marine, Derry; there are as many 


78 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

trades in it as there are in a big city, and seaman¬ 
ship—in the old sense of the word—is one of the 
smallest. But sailormen are always needed.’^ 

“ Til sign on, sir! ” 

Don’t make up your mind in too much of a 
hurry. We sha’n’t get to port for ten days at least, 
and a destroyer isn’t a recruiting station! I’ll send 
the chief quartermaster to you, and you can talk 
to him a bit. Then, if you do decide to join. I’ll 
give you a personal letter which you can show at 
the Recruiting Station. Maybe, later, when you’ve 
learned the ropes, you may be assigned to the Cun¬ 
ningham, I’ll be glad to have you.” 

He shook the boy’s hand, and left Clem to fall 
into a troubled sleep in which the lighthouse-keeper 
was feeding cocoanuts to a destroyer’s guns and 
Annapolis was a semi-tropical island surrounded by 
a coral reef. 

O’Reilly, the chief quartermaster, in his own bluff 
way, was every bit as friendly to the boy as the 
commander had been. On board destroyers, the 
distance between the officers and the enlisted men 
is very much less than on the big battleships, the 
members of the crew are more like a big family. 
The commander had sent for O’Reilly, himself, and 
had talked to him about the boy. There was a 


ROMANCES OF DARING 


79 

good deal of sympathy for Clem on board the Cun¬ 
ningham, and the quartermaster, who was a Class-A 
boxer, openly lamented that Navy discipline pre¬ 
vented him from going ashore to beat up that half- 
breed into a grease-spot small enough to be fed into 
his own lamp,’^ as he expressed it. 

That might have been some satisfaction, but 
there was no need for it. Acting on instructions 
sent by radio from Fleet Headquarters, the Cun¬ 
ningham ran into Porto Cortez and filed a formal 
report with the Honduras authorities to the effect 
that the Nine Quays Light had only one keeper, 
which is against international procedure. The Brit¬ 
ish authorities at Belize were also notified, for Nine 
Quays is on the way to that harbor, and Great Brit¬ 
ain is the Chief Policeman of the Sea. With the 
British authorities on his tracks, the lighthouse- 
keeper might expect a rigorous pursuit. 

Afterward, long afterward, Clem heard the results 
of that investigation. 

The skipper of the Preciosa and Chunk appeared 
in due course of time before the Board of Trade, in 
London, and told the story of the wreck exactly as 
they had agreed upon it between themselves. They 
were allowed to finish their story without interrup¬ 
tion, having previously been sworn. Then they 


8o WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

were confronted with proofs that, on the night of 
the wreck, there had been no heavy storm, as set 
forth by official meteorological records. Clem^s 
statement, sent by cable, was read. The lighthouse- 
keeper, in order to try to save his skin, had also 
made a statement that he had seen the vessel go 
on the reefs by daylight. 

Furious at the half-breeTs treachery to them, 
both the skipper of the Preciosa and Chunk told of 
the murder of the cook by the lighthouse-keeper. 
Copies of their affidavits were sent to Honduras, 
where the half-breed was waiting in prison. On 
Nine Quays Island he had laughed at the Honduras 
laws, but he had not counted on American and 
British pressure on the Honduras courts. He was 
hanged for murder less than a month after the ar¬ 
rival of the affidavits from London. 

As for the wrecking skipper, his master’s certif¬ 
icate was taken from him, and he spent several 
years in prison for manslaughter; Chunk got a short 
term for perjury. The owners were found to be in 
the plot and heavy compensation damages were ex¬ 
acted. 

From the shipping offices in London, the addresses 
of the French Canadian lad, Claude, and of the Fin¬ 
nish cook, Carl, were found. Carl was alone in the 


ROMANCES OF DARING 


8i 


world, but Claude had been the only son of his 
mother, who was a widow, struggling for her living 
in Montreal. 

When the Cunningham got back to the fleet base, 
the whole story of the wreck of the Preciosa was 
published in the weekly newspaper put out by the 
flagship of the fleet. A voluntary subscription was 
started at once, and there wasn’t a bluejacket in the 
entire fleet who did not chip in a dollar—some of 
them a good deal more—toward the fund. Then 
the New York Tribune reprinted the story from the 
naval journal, several other papers followed suit, 
including the Montreal Star, and Claude’s mother 
was relieved from poverty for the rest of her days. 

They could not give her back her boy, but when 
the American Navy and the American press to¬ 
gether undertake to stir the heart of the American 
people, suffering and wrong have got to stop in a 
hurry! That was the last of the wreck of the Pre¬ 
ciosa, 

During the ten days that the Cunningham was at 
sea, Clem was practically free of the boat. He of¬ 
fered, as soon as the doctor let him out of sick-bay, 
to stand watch and do his share of the work, only 
to receive the laughing answer that he didn’t “ know 
enough to tell a gun from a gadget.” 



82 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

This nettled the boy, but he was not long in find¬ 
ing out that it was absolutely true. Navy work is 
like nothing else on earth—or sea—and requires a 
mechanical proficiency and skill for which, of course, 
the merchant marine is no preparation at all. 

This insistence on the mechanical side of the 
training rather dampened Clem’s enthusiasm for the 
Navy. Though he would not have said so to his 
rescuers for worlds, life on the destroyer did not 
suggest sailoring to him at all. He pined for the 
days when he used to lie aloft and take in sail, and 
he had all a shellback’s unmitigated contempt for 
electrical steering-gear and gyroscopic compasses in¬ 
stead of the good old-fashioned wheel and the ordi¬ 
nary magnetic compass of a regular sailing ship. He 
had many things to learn. 

It was O’Reilly, the chief quartermaster, with the 
true Irish instinct for dramatic effect, who began 
to instil into Clem’s mind the realization that naval 
vessels are vessels, just the same, and that, while 
Man uses the ocean for a highway, he still does so 
at the risk of Father Neptune’s wrath. 

'' Look ye here, bhoy,” he said, '' s’pose she’d been 
blowin’ a sneezer when we come to look for ye, 
there’s the divil of a bit o’ doubt that some of us 
would ha’ given the sharks a free lunch.” 


ROMANCES OF DARING 83 

You’d have waited for fair weather, probably,” 
suggested the boy. 

Oh! Sure we would have! An’ told Sparks (the 
radioman) to send a message to the Admiral that we 
weren’t goin’ to obey orders until we thought it 
would be a fine day for rompin’ ashore quiet an’ 
easy on a Sunday School picnic! Holy gadgets! 
Can’t ye see the Old Man (the commander) pullin’ 
off a little stunt like that! Barrin’ foolishness, the 
Navy’ll go where a double-toothed killer whale 
would keep away. 

Don’t ye go to believin’ that the Navy is any 
fair-weather business! There’s more’n one Navy 
ship been lost when huntin’ castaways, just like 
you. My uncle went down on one, the old Saginaw, 
But perhaps ye’ve heard the yarn? ” 

No, Chief,” said Clem, I never did.” 

‘‘ It isn’t a long one. It logs just about this way: 

“ The Saginaw was nothin’ more’n a steam sloop, 
doin’ some dredgin’ on Midway Island, when she 
gets word about some castaways on a reef some- 
wheres in the neighborhood off Ocean Island. Off 
she goes a-hootin’, an’ she’s cruisin’ around when 
she strikes—due to some uncharted current, likely, 
for charts in those days weren’t what they are now. 

She had better luck than the Preciosa, for 


84 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

though she broke in two at once, she drove high on 
the reef and the boats weren’t hurt. She hung to¬ 
gether all that day, and when the boats got ashore, 
why, a good deal o’ stuff had been salvaged. All the 
seventy men, officers an’ crew, reached shore safe. 
But there was no water on the island, an’ though 
one o’ the officers fixed up a sort o’ condenser, a 
man born blind could see that it wouldn’t be long 
before the grub would give out. 

“ Hawaii was just a little swim o’ twelve hundred 
miles away, and volunteers were called. Lieutenant 
Talbot, Coxswain Halford—he got a lieutenant’s 
straps, later—^my uncle, gunner’s mate, and two 
other men set out in a patched-up whaleboat, half 
decked over wi’ painted canvas. 

There was five o’ them in the boat, leavin’ the 
rest on the island—a place something like your 
summer vacation spot, Derry, but lackin’ the fur- 
nishin’s o’ cocoanut-trees an’ a humane half-breed 
lighthouse-keeper, nit! As for rescue. Ocean Island, 
in the middle o’ the Pacific is about as big as a Har¬ 
riet Lane [canned meat] tin driftin’ in mid-ocean. 

There were quarter-rations aboard the boat for 
five men for a month, but most o’ the food went 
bad. The^^ came to eighth rations, after that to 
sixteenth, an’ after that, they sort o’ lost count o’ 


ROMANCES OF DARING 85 

the fractions. Toward the end, the daily chow was 
less’n a handful o’ dried potatoes, a spoonful o’ 
water, an’ two spoonfuls o’ lamp-oil, all mixed up 
together. Some kind o’ scouse, eh? 

She ran into heavy weather, all the way, and the 
gig was doused again an’ again. The boys were kept 
bailin’. It was the thirty-eighth day before land 
hove in sight, astern, the boat havin’ passed it in 
the night. That meant heatin’ back, an’ she was 
bio win’ half a gale. To make it worse, a floatin’ log, 
water-logged, rammed the gig an’ nigh-about stove 
her in. 

The lieut. got her in toward shore, but the men 
were too starved an’ weak to handle the oars an’ 
they tried to beach her under sail. She capsized, 
naturally, an’ three o’ the men—^my uncle among 
’em—were drowned right then and there. The cox¬ 
swain and one man—he’d gone mad, by the way— 
tried to get ashore, but Halford was the only one 
who made it. But he got word to Honolulu, just 
the same, and the rest o’ the crew o’ the Saginaw, 
pretty well starved, were rescued from Ocean Island 
by a Navy craft. An’ that’s only one of a dozen 
such yarns o’ rescue that I could spin ye. I tell 
ye, Derry, the Navy is Johnny-on-the-spot when 
there’s trouble anywhere on the Seven Seas, and 


86 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

^ Can^t do it ^ is a signal that the U. S. Navy has 
never yet run up! 

But, as you say, Chief, that was before the 
days of wireless. A naval vessel couldn^t get 
wrecked now, could she, without all the world 
knowing about it?^’ 

“ Accordin’ to reason, she couldn’t. But, as ye 
know yourself, Derry, there’s a whole lot o’ things 
happen at sea that a landsman knows nothin’ about. 
There was the Cyclops, a big Navy cargo-boat. She 
started north from a South American port during 
the World War, fitted up with radio an’ all the 
latest fixin’s. She was never heard of again! Why? 
Ask me! ’Twasn’t mines or torpedoes. You can’t 
blow up a big craft with safety bulkheads so quick 
that her Sparks won’t have a chance to send out 
an S 0 S, at least. Mystery o’ the sea, bhoy! 
There’s dozens of ’em, still.” 

I don’t see much mystery in a steam-kettle, 
just the same, Chief. Steam-kettles aren’t ships, 
after all, not even the Cunningham! ” 

Bhoy, if any of the Black Gang heard ye say 
that, they’d just about pitch ye into the smoke¬ 
stack an’ ask ye how ye like the smell o’ the fire an’ 
the taste o’ the oil-smoke! But I know what ye 
mean. I used to think that meself, once, for I was 


ROMANCES OF DARING 87 

in windjammers when I was a kid. It’s the ^ ro¬ 
mance ’ business that’s eatin’ ye. 

But there’s romance an’ romance! An’ ye’ll 
never get to be a Navy man, until ye begin to learn 
that there’s nothin’ bigger or more romantic in 
America than the Navy. ’Tain’t only for what 
the Navy’s done, ’tis for what the Navy is. 

‘‘ I don’t want to coax ye into the Navy, an’ I’m 
not goin’ to drive ye in. But I won’t stand for 
any double-barrelled lob-lolly of a windjammin’ 
deck-sweeper try in’ to sniff at the Navy when he 
doesn’t know a turret from a tom-cat! 

Steam-kettles ain’t ships, eh? That’s just your 
plum-duff ignorance, Derry! What is a ship, bhoy? 
It’s just Man’s pluck an’ darin’ to battle against 
the ocean an’ all its dangers. It’s a stand-up fight 
against storm an’ sea. It’s the power o’ brain 
against the powers of the elements. It’s human 
courage an’ human ingenuity raised to the limit, 
that’s what a ship is! An’ you talk about steam- 
kettles! You sit right there an’ flop both your 
ears out while I tell ye what an ironclad is, an’ how 
it came to be! ” 


CHAPTER VII 


IRONCLADS 

Havin’ been in high school, Derry, ye ought to 
know something about the Monitor an’ the Merri- 
mac, eh? ” 

Sure I do! ” replied Clem, glibly, glad to have 
a chance to show that he did know something, for 
his first few days on board a naval vessel had been 
rather humbling to his conceit. The Monitor was 

on the Union side and the Merrimac was rebel-” 

. Call it Confederate, bhoy; the Navy only knows 
one. kind of American—the man who fights for his 
country. In the Civil War, both sides did.” 

Confederate, then. It was not very long after 
the capture of Port Royal by the Union fleet under 
Dupont that-” 

I’m not talkin’ history; I’m talkin’ ships,” the 
chief quartermaster interrupted. What were those 
two craft? ” 

Oh, I see what you mean. They were steam¬ 
ships, both of them; ironclads, too. The first iron¬ 
clads in the world,” he added promptly. 

“An’ which was built first?” 

88 




IRONCLADS 


89 


I—I don’t know! ” confessed Clem. 

The Merrimac. An’ where did the Confederates 
get the idea? ” 

I don’t know that, either! ” 

High school doesn’t teach ye everything, eh? 
Well, the Merrimac was built on a pattern used by 
the French in the Crimean War, four years before. 
So you see, Derry, she wasn’t the first ironclad in 
the world. Now, can ye tell me the difference be¬ 
tween her an’ the Monitor?” 

This was not quite so easy to answer, and Clem 
thought hard for a minute or two. 

One was like a fioating barn, or Noah’s Ark, 
with sloping sides, covered with iron,” he answered, 
thinking of a picture which he had seen in an old 
school book, and the Monitor was like a big bass 
drum stuck on a raft.” 

You know who built the Monitor? ” 

‘‘Yes, Chief; John Ericsson.” 

“ An’ where did he get the idea? ” 

Clem looked blank. 

“ I haven’t the slightest notion! ” 

“Ye ought to have. It’s the beginnings of an 
invention which count most. Ericsson was a cap¬ 
tain of engineers in the Swedish army, one of the 
inventors of the screw propeller for steamships, an’ 


90 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

he first came to America to fit up a U. S. Navy ship 
with a screw propeller. He took out citizenship 
papers, and in 1854 invented the first turret ship, 
using some of the ideas of Theodore Timby. 
Ericsson himself said that the notion of the Monitor 
was given him by the little cabins built on the big 
lumber-rafts on the Swedish Lakes. He’d noticed 
that while rough weather on the lakes sent a sailin’- 
ship pitchin’ an’ rollin’ fifty degrees, the pilot house 
on a raft was steady, the waves dashin’ over the 
raft without movin’ it much. As it’s a durn sight 
easier to shoot from a steady base than a pitchin’ 
one, Ericsson put his improved turret on an armor- 
clad raft. But ye must remember, Derry, that the 
Monitor was intended for inland waters, not for the 
sea.” 

That’s why she went down afterward, then? ” 

An’ nearly sank the night before the battle, too. 
Now, which would ye say won the fight? ” 

“ The Monitor! ” answered the boy, proudly. He 
hailed from Massachusetts. 

“ I wouldn’t be so cocksure! Don’t forget that 
on the day before the famous duel between the iron¬ 
clads the Merrimac had destroyed two o’ the best 
frigates o’ the Union fleet, an’ she’d ha’ sunk the 
rest, next day, if the Monitor hadn’t come along. 



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IRONCLADS 


91 

that very night. It was the Merrimac's destruction 
o' the Cumberland an' the Congress which proved, 
once an' for all, that a wooden ship can't begin to 
fight an ironclad." 

How about the Monitor? " 

“Same thing. The result was that when they 
came to the famous duel—to my reckonin' the most 
important fight in naval history for what it taught 
us—^neither ship won. It was a draw. Neither 
ship's guns could pierce the armor of the other. The 
Merrimac could ha' sunk the Monitor with her ram, 
easy, but she didn't have the speed. If the Monitor 
had had a ram, she could ha' sunk the Merrimac, 
but she wasn't seaworthy enough. 

“ That's where the importance comes in, Derry. 
The first fight in the world between ironclads— 
American, both o' them—showed that in naval 
fightin' there's four things to be considered: pro¬ 
tective armor, penetration o' projectiles, speed, an' 
seaworthiness. Follow naval ship-buildin' all the 
way along, an' you'll find that's what counts. One 
time the armor is too strong for guns, an' the guns 
get improved. Then armor-piercin' projectiles come 
on top, an' there's a scramble right away to improve 
the armor. 

“ The fight in Mobile Bay—Farragut's ‘ Damn 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


92 

the torpedoes’ fight—was won for the Union side 
for one reason only: the Confederate ram Tennessee 
lacked speed. With two knots more, she could ha’ 
sent Farragut an’ all his ships to the bottom in 
short order. That was a great fight o’ Farragut’s, 
but it came near bein’ a huge disaster for the Union 
side.” 

I’ve often thought about that,” put in Clem. 

What did he mean by ‘ torpedoes ’ ? There weren’t 
any real torpedoes as early as that, were there? ” 

They were real enough to blow the Tecumseh 
out o’ water, right before Farragut’s eyes that very 
day,” the quartermaster answered, “an’ 113 men 
were lost out of a crew of 135. That’s how good 
they were. But ye’re right in a way, Derry. They 
weren’t what we call ‘ torpedoes,’ now. They were 
mines. 

“ The submarine, the mine, an’ the torpedo— 
though we heard a lot about ’em in the World War 
—aren’t new inventions, at all. In 1606 a Dutch 
inventor made a sort of submarine, an’, later, gave 
King James I a ride in it, under the Thames. A 
Yankee inventor named Bushnell, during the Revo- 
lutionaiy War, invented a submarine which he 
called the Turtle, an’ gave the British vessels a 
mighty scare. In France, the Marquis de Jouffroy, 


IRONCLADS 


93 

who invented the first working steamboat—long be¬ 
fore Fulton, as Fulton himself admitted—also had 
a model submarine. 

But as for torpedo mines, they’re almost as old 
as powder. Ye ought to remember, m the case of 
the Spanish Armada, fire-ships with powder charges 
aboard were sent drifting before the wind on the 
big galleons. They were torpedoes. Beer-barrels, 
filled with powder, with a pointed cone on each end 
bearing a percussion cap, an’ either anchored or 
floating, were mines, an’ they were used hundreds o’ 
years ago.” 

^‘And what was it that blew up the Tecumseh, 
Chief? ” 

A beer-barrel mine. It was the success of that 
little mine, and the success both of the Merrimac 
and the Monitor against any wooden vessels which 
doomed the old ‘ Heart of Oak ’ ships. Ye mayn’t 
know it, but, during the Civil War, twenty-eight 
ships were sunk or badly damaged by torpedoes and 
mines. 

Ye see, Derry, the Civil War came right after 
the Crimean War had shown the value of ironclads. 
The first real sea-going ironclad was a French ship 
La Gloire, launched in 1859. The English followed 
with the Warrior, sl year later. So the stage was all 


94 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

set for the coming of the ironclads. The Civil War 
gave the chance for quick development. 

Talk about romance! Think o’ Captain Cooke 
o’ the Confederate Navy chasin’ up an’ down the 
homesteads o’ Lower Virginia in a farm wagon, beg- 
gin’ for old iron, tearin’ off wagon-tires, coupling 
bolts, old horseshoes—everything to build the Al¬ 
bemarle! An’ to my mind, the work o’ the David is 
more amazin’ an’ more romantic still. When ye 
want to talk about gallantry in the American Navy, 
ye want to remember the work that what ye like to 
call ‘ rebel ’ Americans did in the Civil War. 

‘^Ye know, Derry, one o’ the most important 
duties the Union Navy had to do was to blockade 
the Southern ports, so’s supplies couldn’t get in, be¬ 
cause the nations of Europe were leanin’ pretty far 
over to the Confederate side.” 

I know.” 

“So the South, naturally, had to break that 
blockade, if they could. They hadn’t the money an’ 
the men for big ships—lack o’ money was one big 
cause o’ the South’s final defeat—so they figured 
that it was up to them to develop submarines, tor¬ 
pedoes an’ the like. They called ’em ‘ Davids ’ for 
they were s’posed to put out o’ business the 
‘ Goliaths ’ o’ the blockading fleet. 



IRONCLADS 


95 

The David I’m goin" to tell ye about, Derry, 
was the one that sank the Housatonic. ’Twas a 
man’s fight, that! 

“ She wasn’t much of a craft to look at. The pro¬ 
peller shaft was driven by hand, eight men working 
it. The skipper sat forrard. A spar projected from 
the nose of her with a barrel torpedo lashed on the 
end of it. She was supposed to be half a submarine. 
She was too much of a one! The first time she went 
out she made a real ^ dive ’ an’ didn’t come up again. 
All the ten men aboard were suffocated. That hap¬ 
pened five times. The world doesn’t half realize 
what it has cost in men’s lives to develop the means 
of defendin’ a nation’s existence. 

What have ye got to say about the pluck o’ 
the men—five men an’ two officers—^who volun¬ 
teered to get in her again, just to try an’ blow up 
the Housatonic in Charleston Harbor! Well, they 
went out one evening, runnin’ on the surface, an’ 
though the watch on the big steam-sloop gave the 
alarm, the David poked her spar torpedo against 
the side o’ the ship, bim! The Housatonic filled 
an’ sunk right then an’ there. It wasn’t until after 
the war that the David was found. Her nose was 
plumb in the very hole made by the torpedo, an’ 
the skeletons o’ the men were found, still at their 


96 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

posts. That was the only submarine which sank a 
vessel o^ war until the Germans began their little 
game in 1914.’’ 

‘‘That sure was pluck! ” Clem agreed. 

“ Romantic enough, too, eh? There’s nothin’ 
finer ’n that in all the boardin’ an’ cutlass fightin’ 
on sailin’ craft o’ the old time. I tell ye, Derry, 
Navy men are good! 

“ Then there’s the Albemarle I started to tell ye 
about, the ram made out o’ wagon-tires, horseshoes, 
an’ the like. She was a Confederate craft, too. Her 
business was to try an’ break the blockade of Al¬ 
bemarle an’ Pamlico Sounds. The Union fleet had 
barricaded every outlet, but the ram got through. 
She wasn’t yet finished when she left port; the 
riveters were still workin’ an’ the crew hadn’t had 
any gun practice. That was fatal. Guns aren’t a 
whole lot of use to men who can’t handle ’em. 
That’s why there’s such a lot o’ gunnery practice 
in the American Navy to-day, an’ we hold several 
world’s records for big-gun shoo tin’, even if we say 
it as shouldn’t. 

“ Well, the Albemarle kited out one fine evenin’ 
to play tag with the Union fleet. Two gunboats, the 
Southfield and the Miami, were in the river. The 
Albemarle —she was a good bit o’ the same build 


IRONCLADS 


97 

as the Merrimac only more speedy—rammed the 
Southfield an’ the gunboat went down, all standing. 
She then turned on the Miami, but the Miami 
dodged the ram, pouring out shell at the Albemarle 
as fast as she could. One shell burst on the case¬ 
mate o’ the ram, and the splinters killed Lieutenant 
Flusser o’ the Miami, commanding; small wonder, 
the boats weren’t two fathoms apart! Seein’ that 
the Albemarle didn’t give a hoot for shells—that’s 
where armor comes in, Derry—the Miami cut an’ 
run. She had the heels o’ the ram or she wouldn’t 
ha’ lasted long. 

The river free, the Albemarle started out to fight 
the whole durn Union fleet alone. She sank one 
boat right away, but owin’ to poor gunnery, though 
she riddled the upper part o’ the hulls o’ most o’ the 
rest, she didn’t put a single shell between wind and 
water. All the little craft o’ the Union fleet poured 
in shot an’ shell on the Albemarle; scores o’ shots 
struck, but nothing got through the ram’s armor. 
Her steerin’-gear got damaged, though, so did her 
smoke-stack, and one of the two big guns jammed. 
She ran in for repairs, and never came out again, as 
it happened. 

But she might, any time. The Union fleet 
didn’t have a quiet night’s sleep so long as the Al- 


98 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

bemarle was afloat. The Confeds were building 
another ram, an’ waiting to attack in pairs. That 
meant that the boys o’ the North had to look alive, 
an’ no mistake about it. 

^^Well, they decided to send ^Daredevil Cushing’ 
up the river in a light launch, to sink the Albemarle 
with a spar torpedo, like the David had done to the 
Housatonic. I want ye to notice, Derry, how iron¬ 
clads an’ torpedoes were gettin’ to be the big things, 
already in the days o’ the Civil War. Everybody 
doesn’t realize it. 

Cushing’s attack was supposed to be a secret, 
but both sides had spies in every camp, and the Al¬ 
bemarle knew all about the cornin’ attack. One 
dark rainy night, Cushing slipped up the river, un¬ 
seen, and suddenly found a boom o’ logs between 
him an’ the Albemarle. At the same minute, he was 
discovered. There was no chance to get back. He 
put on full speed, an’ reckonin’ rightly that the logs 
would be slippery, he hurdled the barrier, ran up 
to the ram, adjusted his torpedo an’ sank her, just 
at the minute that the AlbemarWs big gun let drive. 
The launch was swamped, some of the Union men 
drowned an’ the rest of ’em captured. Cushing 
swam down river, hid in a swamp, swam on down 
again next night, found an old dug-out and managed 


IRONCLADS 


99 

to make the fleet. No one ever did anything finer 
durin’ the war. Not much to choose between North 
an’ South, bhoy! Americans, all! ” 

And the Alabama and the Kearsarge, Chief? I 
heard a lot about them at school. They weren’t 
ironclads, were they? ” 

“ Not exactly, Derry. They were wooden craft 
with chain armor on the sides. The Alabama was a 
commerce-destroyer built by England for the Con¬ 
federate cause and largely manned by British sail¬ 
ors. She was one o’ the most successful commerce- 
destroyers ever built, an’ in a cruise o’ two years she 
traveled seventy-five thousand miles, burned fifty- 
seven ships and released twenty-two more on ran¬ 
som. She just about drove all American shippin’ 
from the sea. As you know, her captain, Semmes, 
was forced into a duel with the Kearsarge when he 
was coaling at the French port o’ Cherbourg. The 
ships were about evenly matched, but the Union 
naval gunnery won the day, that an’ steam, for 
the Kearsarge had the heels. The Alabama plunged 
suddenly an’ only a fraction o’ the men were saved, 
for the Kearsarge^s bokts were riddled. Most o’ the 
men were saved by an English yacht, the captain of 
which had come out ^ to see the fun.’ 

I won’t bother to tell ye of all the rest of the 


loo WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

fleet work, but yeVe got to remember that, in spite 
o^ the constant defeats on land, the North won, just 
the same. An’ why? Because of the Navy, me 
bhoy, because of the Navy! ” 

This point is so little known, in general, that the 
words of a great authority. Prof. Stevens, of An¬ 
napolis, may be quoted: 


When the news of the downfall of the Confeder¬ 
acy reached England, a cartoon came out in Punch 
depicting the end of a gladiatorial combat. The 
prostrate South was represented as the gladiator 
with the helmet and short sword, the victorious 
North was the one with the trident and the net. In 
this picture, the trident and the net stood for sea 
power. 

Only in later years have we come to realize the 
full truth of that cartoon—namely, that the decid¬ 
ing factor in that great struggle was the control of 
the sea held by the North. If the trade between 
cotton and supplies had gone on, the South could 
have kept on flghting indefinitely. [This is going 
a little far; F. R-W.] As the trade was steadily 
narrowed down by the Union fleet, the Confederacy 
grew weaker, till the fall of Fort Fisher left the 
Soutn helpless. 

Only once was the sea-power of the North se¬ 
riously threatened, and that was the day of the 
MerrimaPs overwhelming victory over the wooden 
ships in Hampton Roads. For the rest of the war, 
the story of the Navy is one of an ever-increasing 
effectiveness, of one port taken after another, and 


IRONCLADS 


lOI 


of a more and more compact wall of ships between 
the Confederacy and the outside world. 

In 1865, the blockade held unchallenged sway 
from Cairo, Ill.,—for the Mississippi River was an 
important part of the line—all the way round to 
Fortress Monroe. The work was dull and hard, 
with much sickness and little chance for glory, but 
we must remember that, after all, it was the naval 
blockade that counted most in saving the Union.^^ 

With the telling of the story of the Alabama and 
the Kearsarge, the chief quartermaster had kept 
silent for a moment, to see Clem^s reaction. 

. “ I suppose, after that,^’ said the boy, thought¬ 
fully, all battleships were ironclads.’^ 

All were ironclads, in the sense that they had 
armor, but they werenT all iron ships all through. 
Look around ye, here, on the Cunningham, Aside 
from a box of matches you may happen to have in 
your pocket, ye’ll have to do some hunting to find 
any wood. The all-steel battleship isn’t any fancy 
idea. Like nearly everything in the Navy, improve¬ 
ments have been the result of actual fighting. 

‘‘ The Spanish-American War was a one-sided af¬ 
fair, I’ll admit that. Spain couldn’t ha’ licked the 
States if she’d tried for a thousand years. She was 
out-shipped, out-gunned, out-manned an’ out¬ 
manoeuvred as well as bein’ out-pursed. She didn’t 



102 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

have any more chance than a snowball in an oil- 
burner^s fire-box. 

There^s no need to talk about the fightin^ at 
Manila Bay. The forts lay down, that's all there 
was to that. The Spanish fleet fought bravely 
enough, but the ships were useless an' they tried to 
use old Civil War tactics—tryin' to ram against the 
concentrated fire o' modern guns. Naturally, they 
were shot to pieces. 

What I want ye to notice, Derry, is the Santiago 
Bay battle. The Spanish ships were tryin' to get 
out, an' they did get out! There were only four 
o' them against our five, an' ours were heavier an' 
better in every way. Our guns only sank one o' 
their vessels, an' yet every Spanish ship went 
aground. Why? Woodwork! 

The Maria Teresa got clear from us, so did the 
Vizcaya, and the Colon had outfooted everybody. 
But while our shells hadn't dealt a single vital blow, 
so far—though we sure had pounded 'em for fair— 
first the flagship, then the Vizcaya and lastly the 
Colon broke into flames and their captain had to 
beach the ships to save the men. If those Spanish 
men-o'-war had been all steel, three out o' the four 
would ha' got away." 

You're right. Chief," the boy agreed, for there 


IRONCLADS 


103 

was no disputing this growth in the efficiency of an 
ironclad since the days of the Monitor, it may be 
fighting, but it isn^t sailing.’’ 

Whoever said it was? ” snapped back the quar¬ 
termaster. The Navy’s a fightin’ organization, an’ 
any one who tries to make believe that it isn’t, 
doesn’t know what he’s talking about. ‘ Fight as 
little as you can, but fight like fury when you have 
to’—that’s about the way I see the Navy.” 

“ I’ll join! ” said Clem. 


CHAPTER VIII 


BOOTS 

The commander proved to be as good as his 
word. As soon as the chief quartermaster reported 
to him that Clem Derry had decided to join the 
Navy, he sent for him again, and gave him a barrel¬ 
ful of good advice. The boy’s firmness on Nine 
Quays Island had greatly predisposed the officer in 
his favor, and he had a good deal of sympathy for 
a lad who had set his hope on Annapolis and had 
been blocked in that ambition by family troubles. 

Understand, Derry,” he said, as he handed him 
the personal letter he had promised, my word 
isn’t any better than any one else’s in this matter. 
There’s no playing favorites in the Navy. Promo¬ 
tion among enlisted men, either to the petty grades, 
the warrant grade, or to Annapolis is based on noth¬ 
ing but all-round merit. Being a smart sailor, alone, 
won’t do it; you must use your head. Headwork, 
alone, won’t do it, you must make a record as a 
smart sailor, first. Do what you’re told, and do it 
on the jump; then find out why, afterward. Good 


104 


“ BOOTS ” 105 

luck to you, Derry. I hope to see you a junior officer 
on my ship some of these days.^’ 

Tha-ank you, sir,’^ stuttered Clem and left the 
cabin with the precious letter in his hand. 

Being from Massachusetts, the Recruiting Office 
at New Orleans, to which he had been instructed to 
go, sent him to the Naval Training Station at New¬ 
port, instead of to Hampton Roads, where most of 
the recruits from the Southern States go. Since it 
was not far from his home he had received special 
permission to go to see his family, though the boy, 
with a certain thrill, noticed that this permission 
was worded as being “ twenty-four hours^ leave.’^ 
That was so. He was in the Navy, now! 

In order to be in Newport before his leave expired, 
he had only four hours and a half in his home town, 
a short time in which to tell, all over again, his ex¬ 
periences on Nine Quays Island, and on board the 
Cunningham, His father, almost bedridden, was 
a good deal disappointed on finding that Clem was 
an enlisted man, but he brightened up at the boy^s 
determination to get a nomination to Annapolis. 

‘^Do it, my boy! he said. “Do it! And, if 
you can, you will take away from me the thing that 
hurts me most—the thought that IVe been an ob¬ 
stacle in your career! ’’ 


io6 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

And Clem, as he tore down the street to catch 
the train—^he had left his Good-bye to the very 
last moment—swore a deep vow to himself that he 
would make that nomination, no matter how hard 
it was nor what trouble it cost him. 

His ten days on the Cunningham had given him 
a certain advantage on the other new recruits— 
Boots as they were generally called, for no other 
reason, apparently, than that among the items of 
the outfit which a recruit received from a pay¬ 
master’s yeoman on his first appearance at Newport 
was a pair of shiny rubber boots. 

Although he had handed in the commander’s 
letter with his enlistment certificate, he soon found 
that this did not give him any advantage at all 
over the other men. The only reference came from 
the chief petty officer who presided over the table 
at “ chow ” time, and who said to him, in a friendly 
way: 

Eat hearty, Derry, you’ve some meals to make 
up, I hear.” 

After dinner, some of the men chaffed him and 
questioned him, but, remembering the advice of his 
friend, the chief quartermaster, Derry did as little 
talking as he could. 

Keepin’ your mouth open doesn’t teach ye any- 


“ BOOTS 107 

thing,” O’Reilly had said. “ Keepin’ your ears open 
does.” 

The afternoon work began with' drill. That 
caught Clem badly. It was only three weeks since 
he had left Nine Quays Island and he was far from 
being back to his full strength. As a matter of fact, 
he would not have passed his physical examination 
at the Recruiting Office nor at Newport, if he had 
not brought with him a supplementary certificate 
from the surgeon of the Cunningham. 

X 

You there, slouching! ” roared the chief petty 
officer in charge. Sixth down the line. What’s 
your name? ” 

Derry, Chief.” 

An apprentice seaman says ‘ sir ’ ! Leave that 
‘ Chief ’ business till you get your rating.” 

Yes, sir.’^ 

Straighten up, then. Your back’s like a figure- 
eight knot.” 

Very red in the face, Clem stood as straight as he 
could, although it hurt a little. A titter ran down 
the line. 

Do the rest of you think you’re any better? ” 
roared the petty officer, as he heard the laugh. I 
could hang a slush-can on the shoulders of every one 
of you! ” 


io8 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

The men straightened up and stopped laughing. 

H'm, that’s a little better. 

Now, I’m going to have you march a bit. Re¬ 
member, you’ve only got two feet apiece, not a 
dozen. Keep in mind which is which. Left foot 
first. March! ” 

‘‘Halt! ” he roared a minute later. “You give 
me a headache! What do you think you’re doin’, 
Smith, running a wheelbarrow? You there, Reed, I 
told you to march, not to fox-trot. Derry, get a 
little snap into your ankles, this isn’t a sick¬ 
bay. . . 

They tried again. 

“ It’s crutches I want for this lot! ” the C. P. 0. 
groaned. “ Step together! Sufferin’smoke-stacks! 

I 

Don’t you know what ‘ together ’ means? . . .” 

They did, but they couldn’t do it. Marching with 
good swing and unison is not learned in an after¬ 
noon, or a week, or even a month, but the drill- 
master knew exactly what he wanted, he knew how 
to correct faults, and he knew just how to get the 
most out of the men. An hour later, the men were 
stepping out more briskly, and Clem had overcome 
his first resentment. If the criticisms were cutting, 
they were just, and every man in that group of re¬ 
cruits felt that the petty officer in charge was ear- 


BOOTS ” 109 

nestly and honestly trying to do his best for every 
one of them. That counts for a good deal with men 
who are worth while. 

The afternoon was a busy one, and Clem was hot 
and tired when the word was passed to fall in for 
supper. The food, certainly, was astonishingly good, 
and there was all that a man could eat, so that the 
boy felt fit again when the watch was mustered for 
a short talk by the divisional petty ofiicer. 

Men,” he said shortly, I want you to start off 
with the idea that you’ve joined the Navy because 
you’re proud of it. If that’s so, you’ve got to make 
the Navy proud of you. It’s easy, and it isn’t easy. 
If you’re in the American Navy, an’ you are, then 
you’ve got to be an American and a Navy man. 
I’m not sayin’ which comes first, but it’s a blamed 
sure thing that you can’t be the last without bein’ 
the first. 

Another thing. There isn’t any slumgullion 
nonsense about bein’ too proud to fight. You’re 
fightin’ men in the Navy, and that’s a fact. But 
you don’t want to run away with the notion that 
the Navy’s for war, only. There’s a whole raft o’ 
things for the Navy to do in peace times, an’ you’ve 
got to do it. 

Our American commerce represents a yearly 


no WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

value of thirteen billions of dollars. Every dollar 
of that, men, is under the protection of the Navy. 
Commerce is the life of a nation. The Navy is the 
protection of commerce. Nine out of ten of the 
factories of the United States would have to shut 
up shop if there wasnT any export or import trade. 
Nine farms out of ten would be crippled the same 
way. All that means ships, and ships mean men. 
Get that! 

I’ll give you an idea. After the Armistice in 
1918, the Near East was in an unhealthy and unset¬ 
tled state. American interests had millions of dol¬ 
lars there, and there were several thousand Amer¬ 
ican citizens who would have been in jeopardy if 
trouble had broken out. Only one thing to do—send 
the Navy! We held things quiet. How? By big 
guns? No! More than anything else by our men. 
There’s no better advertisement of what America 
stands for than a clean snappy crew of bluejackets 
on a smart ship. 

Derry! ” 

Sir! ” 

Tell the men of your watch about your own 
rescue, some time.” 

^^Yes, sir.” 

Errands of mercy, men, are a part of the Navy’s 


“BOOTS” 


111 


constant duty. I could name you a dozen cases, off¬ 
hand, just within the last couple of years. Get some 
one to tell you all about the rescue of the French 
transport, the Vinh-Long, by one of our destroyers, 
the Bainbridge, The French ship, with 496 passen¬ 
gers on board, caught fire at sea. The Bainbridge 
was put alongside, and rescued 482 of the passengers 
despite a panic on board, caused by a series of bad 
explosions. It was a gallant piece of work, so the 
newspapers said. We didnT. It was Navy work, 
that’s all. 

“You’ve just joined. Some of you will serve 
four years, and go out. Some will reenlist. A good 
many of you will become petty officers. Some of 
you will become warrant officers. One or two of 
you may even get to Annapolis. But the ranking 
Admiral is no more a part of the American Navy 
than the rawest recruit. You’ve got to be as good 
in your job as he is in his. And there’s only one 
way to get along in the Navy. That is to do what 
you’ve got to do as well as you know how, whether 
it’s scrubbing a deck or directing a fleet. If it’s our 
business to teach you to be Navy men, it’s yours to 
learn. That’s enough talk from me. 

“ Here’s President Coolidge’s way of putting it, 
and when you sling hammocks, for your first night 


I 12 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

in Newport, it won’t hurt you to remember as much 
of it as you can: 

‘ You have chosen a profession,’ said the Presi¬ 
dent, ‘ which represents one of the greatest military 
arms of the Government. You will be a constant 
testimony through your lives—or your term of en¬ 
listment—that America believes in military prepa¬ 
ration for national defense, for the protection of the 
rights, the security, the peace of her citizens. You 
will represent the power, the glory, and the honor 
of this nation among foreign people, with all the 
prominence that arises from wearing the uniform 
and carrying the flag.’ 

^^You get that, all of you! Live up to it, an’ 
you’ll do. Fall out! ” 

In barracks, the men crowded around Clem to 
hear the story of his rescue, and he had good sense 
enough to lay all the stress on the coming of the 
Cunningham and what it meant. After swinging 
the hammocks, tattoo, which was at nine o’clock, 
came all too soon and taps five minutes later. It 
was Clem’s first experience of sleeping in a ham¬ 
mock—for they had bunks aboard the Cunningham 
—^but he was asleep before he knew where he was. 

It seemed to him that he had been asleep only 
five minutes before the bugle sounded the reveille: 

Time to get up! Time to get up! Time to get 


BOOTS'’ 113 

up in the morning! Oh, you lubbers, tumble out of 
your hammocks! Oh, you lubbers, get on the job 
right away! Time to get up! Time to get up! 
Time to get up in the morning. Get—up—aright— 
now! ” 

The old cry from a boatswain’s mate of the watch 
followed: 

All hands, rise and shine! ” 

Clem did not wait for any further urging. He was 
on his feet one of the first. 

So began the day. 

A good big cup of hot coffee was served, and then 
scrubbing-down began. There was plenty to do be¬ 
fore breakfast, and when it did come, Clem put 
away as much grub as would have kept him for a 
week on Nine Quays Island. One thing was sure— 
he would not die of starvation in the Navy! 

Work began with a whoop. Drill was the first 
business of the day, and how the C. P. 0. did hand 
his instructions out! Even the sloppiest of the new 
recruits began to feel the spirit of the place running 
through his veins. It was no mere commanding, 
it was rather a finely trained method of making the 
men feel that each and every one had the traditions 
of the Navy to keep up. 

Clem had thought that he should easily show him- 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


114 

self superior to the enlisted men, for, having been 
brought up with the intention of going straight to 
Annapolis, he had always supposed that enlisted 
men would be a much rougher and more ignorant 
lot than he found them to be. He was speedily dis¬ 
illusioned. Most of them were his equals, and—for 
Clem was honest with himself—some were better 
educated than he, and more manly for their age. 

And there were only a hundred nominations a 
year from the entire Navy! Annapolis began to 
look a long distance away. 

Signal work was an especial trial to Clem. He 
had no trouble in learning the flags, in fact, he 
learned them more quickly than any other man in 
his watch. But he was naturally not spry with his 
hands, and at least half the men showed up better 
than he did at practice. It seemed to the boy—for 
he was sensitive—that the chief petty ofiicer was 
harder on him than on any of the other men. But 
he kept a stiff upper lip and never showed that he 
resented what seemed to him to be unfair treatment. 

The days passed quickly, for there was an enor¬ 
mous amount to learn, and the discipline was strict. 
Every moment of the day was filled with instruc¬ 
tions of one kind and another. Wherever there was 
book-work, or head-work, Clem forged well to the 




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International Newsreel Photo, 

U. S. S. Nevada in Target Test. 


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scoring clean hits, proving these gunners to be among the best 

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International Newsreel Photo. 


Target Repair Crews at Work. 

Repairing the screens after hits, and awaiting signals from the 
Nevadii to clear from the scene in preparation for further firing. 












^‘BOOTS’’ 115 

front; when there was a question of briskness of 
manual action, he was left behind. 

Slowly, however, the boy began to perceive that 
he was getting well liked by the rest of the men. 
They did not chaff him as much as they did at first. 
Some of them came to him and asked him questions. 
He could not always answer them, but he had less 
hesitation in asking the petty officers, and, what was 
more, he retained their answers. There was a good 
library at the Station, and, though the recruits had 
not a great deal of time for reading, during the first 
few weeks, there were more periods of recreation 
than it seemed possible that there could be. 

A couple of months had nearly elapsed when the 
chief petty officer of the division stopped Clem, near 
the barracks, one day. 

‘‘ Derry,’’ he said, abruptly, I’ve an idea that 
you’ve been doing a good deal of reading.” 

Yes, sir, a little.” 

‘‘You can’t learn too much about the Navy. I 
suppose, too, that you’ve noticed I’ve been after you 
pretty steady.” 

“N-no, sir.” 

“ That means ‘ Yes.’ Think I’ve been picking on 
you a bit? ” 

Clem colored, but did not answer. 


ii6 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

'' Well, it's true. I have. And I'll tell you why. 
It isn't always the quickest man who's the best, 
all round. There are quicker men than you in the 
squad, Derry." 

Yes, sir; I know there are." 

Now, I don't want you to get discouraged. It's 
easy to make a machine that'll work quicker than 
any man. But a man's worth more than a machine. 
You can't make a machine want to learn any more. 
You can't make a machine think. You can't give a 
machine any initiative. You can't give a machine 
any responsibility. You can't make a machine do 
anything more than what it's been made to do. 
That's so, isn't it? " 

Yes, sir," said Clem, wondering what was com¬ 
ing. 

Now, in the Navy, a man who's worth his salt 
has got to want to learn, got to think, got to be 
ready to take responsibility, and got to understand 
his mates. If he can do that, he's going to be Use¬ 
ful to the Navy. How'd you like to be squad-leader, 
Derry? " 

Me, sir! " 

Yes, you. If I've been hammering at you a bit 
hard, it's been because there were some wrinkles in 
you that needed straightening out. There are still. 


BOOTS” 117 

But I think youVe done your best, I think youVe 
shown a good deal of desire to learn all you can, and 
I think you’ll find that the men will take it natural 
to see you as a squad-leader.” 

“ But—but there are many others, sir.” 

“ Certainly there are, but it’s our business to pick 
the men we think best. You don’t suppose that 
you’re a better judge of men than we are, do you? ” 

No, sir.” 

Very good. Take up your duties as squad-leader 
to-morrow morning! ” 

^‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” 

The chief petty officer smiled as he shook hands. 

I’ve heard about your ambitions, Derry. If you 
keep on as you’re doing, you may make it. Climb¬ 
ing the ladder isn’t so hard, if you go climbing 
every step. Powder-boy to Admiral, you know! ” 


CHAPTER IX 


ABOARD A BATTLESHIP 

If Clem had been a little bewildered by life on 
board the destroyer, after his rescue from Nine 
Quays Island, and taken aback by the ceaseless ac¬ 
tivity of the Newport Naval Training Station, he 
was yanked clear off his feet with surprise the min¬ 
ute he found himself on a battleship after he had 
finished his three months al Newport. 

He had seen these stupendous vessels from afar, 
naturally, as has every lad who has been on or near 
the sea, but he had not the faintest conception of 
what a first-class battleship really was. All this 
teaching at the Training Station had but given him 
a general idea. 

“ This ain’t a ship, it’s a bloomin’ universe! ” said 
Clem’s chum to him, as they lined up on board. 
Clem, himself, had somewhat of the same feeling, 
though he would have worded it differently. 

There is no stranger feeling than that whicH a 
great battleship gives. It is not of the land; it is 
not of the sea; it is of the Navy. A cargo steamer 
is merely an engined box for the transport of goods, 

ii8 


ABOARD A BATTLESHIP 


119 

but a warship is filled to every inch of her space 
with men and machinery. There is not a useless 
man, not an unneeded mechanism, not a wasted inch 
of space. 

0 

The petty officer who had brought them to the 
ship, a psychologist in his own way—as all petty 
officers have to be, more or less—after he had lined 
them up on board, refrained from making a speech. 
Looking around at the ship—and it was easy to see 
that there was pride and affection in his glance—he 
said, simply: 

“ Get the feel of her, men! ” 

Yes, that was the very word: the feel of her,’’ a 
real pulsating feeling. The ship was not only per¬ 
sonal, but individually personal, and Clem realized 
instantly the full meaning why, to a sailor, a ship is 
always she.” A curious thought came to him, as 
he stood there, waiting, a feeling which he would 
never have again, but which, in all his years of navy 
life afterward, he never lost. 

It was this: That the infinite care and cleanliness, 
the extreme precision, the evidence of constant at¬ 
tention on the battleship was not only with the 
purpose of having the vessel spick and span, with 
every part working in the finest order, but it was 
also that this very attentiveness should react upon 




120 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


the men. We grow to love what we have cared for. 
He felt that there was a perfect fitness in all this 
order and immaculateness in addition to the sense 
of personality, and he felt instinctively, that an 
article out of place or a clouded piece of brasswork 
would be an actual offense, like a smudge upon one’s 
own face. 

t 

And there was more than all this, too. This was 
not merely ‘‘a” ship, not merely a Navy ship, it 
was “ his ” ship. Like a thunderclap there came the 
realization of what the older men in the Training 
Station had meant in their prideful and affectionate 
memories of the ships on which they had served. 
But it was his ” ship in another way, too. He did 
not belong to it, she belonged to him. Without be¬ 
ing aware of it, the Navy feeling was getting into 
his bones, and, as time would show, he would be as 
competitively eager for the high rank of his ship 
in the fleet as though he were the captain himself, 
on the bridge. 

There is a snappy exactness in one of Fitzhugh 
Green’s descriptions of a young sailor’s first board¬ 
ing of a battleship, which renders it well worth the 
quoting: 

“ It was the atmosphere of efficiency, of busyness, 
and of extraordinary cleanliness that struck Ben 


ABOARD A BATTLESHIP 


I2I 


first of all. Every gun and bulkhead glistened with 
new paint. The brightwork or brass rails and nickel- 
plated fittings here and there about the deck glis¬ 
tened in the sun. Coils of milky-white rope lay 
neatly under the davits where the boats were slung. 
And what few chests or lockers were visible outside 
the ship’s superstructure were all freshly painted 
and lashed in place. 

“ Another thought which fascinated Ben was that 
here, under his feet, was a giant steel world in it¬ 
self: a man-built world of steel frames and mecha¬ 
nisms that was complete enough to cruise around 
the globe with no alteration in its make-up save the 
occasional addition of food and fuel. Between decks 
he knew were the facilities for lodging and feeding 
over a thousand men. Galleys and laundries, light¬ 
ing and heating plants, a complete hospital, machine 
shop, tailor shop, ice plant, shoe shop, chemical lab¬ 
oratory, business offices and a score of other activi¬ 
ties which were in addition to all that the fighting 
side of Navy life required.” 

A chief petty officer came and stood before the 
line with an open book. Having been instructed a 
little in the ways of ship life, Clem concluded that 
this was a clerk or yeoman from the executive of¬ 
ficer’s office, who would assign the new men to com¬ 
panies or divisions. He was right.’ A few minutes 
later he heard his name called with six others to go 
to the First Division. A petty officer, wearing a 
coxswain’s rating badge on his sleeve, stepped for¬ 
ward and bade all First Division men follow him. 


122 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

A moment later Clem and the other five found 
themselves before a tall, well-braced, ruddy-faced 
young officer with two stripes on his sleeve, who 
said: 

‘‘ Take a good look at me, men. I am Lieutenant 
Lankester, your divisional officer. My boatswain’s 
mate will presently show you your part of the ship 
where you will stow your gear. He will give you 
some slips of paper with questions on them that I 
want you to fill out. These questions are my own 
private concern, and I keep their answers confi¬ 
dential. They have to do with your schooling, your 
past occupations, your ambitions, and your reasons 
for* coming into the Navy. I am frank to say that 
I study every man who works under me. 

The First Division on this ship has the reputa¬ 
tion of being about the most efficient in the Fleet. 
WeVe broken two world’s records in Turret One, 
which you will be assigned to. And on board here 
we have the strongest boat crew and the clearest 
record at captain’s inspections of any division. I’m 
telling you all this now, not to boast, but to let you 
know, right here and now, what will be expected of 
you. I set a high standard, and expect every man 
to live up to it.” 

Having delivered himself of this speech, the officer 


ABOARD A BATTLESHIP 123 

turned to the boatswain’s mate, first class, beside 
him, and nodded. The two exchanged salutes, and 
the officer disappeared aft toward the wardroom 
quarters, where he and the other lieutenants, lieu¬ 
tenant commanders and commanders lived. 

The boatswam’s mate grinned in a friendly way 
before he began to speak. Then his face tautened, 
and a scowl dented his brow. 

He means it, fellows,” he snapped. And I’m 
tellin’ you that when Mr. Lankester gets on your 
trail you’ll skedaddle about five knots faster than 
you’ve ever moved before. That’s why what he 
said about old Division One is true. Now come on 
forrard an’ I’ll show you the ropes.” 

Through a steel door the men followed their guide 
in to the casemate or inner spaces of the ship’s 
superstructure. Here, again, Clem was struck by 
the exquisite cleanliness of all about him. The 
decks were covered with a red linoleum polished so 
that he could almost see his face in it. There was 
no furniture about, save one or two light folding 
mess-benches, and an occasional gunner’s mate’s 
chest lashed inboard against the white bulkheads 
that divided one gun compartment from another. 

“ Here is where Division One messes,” said the 
petty officer, with a sweep of his arm toward the 


124 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

compartment in which the party now stood. The 
space was about thirty feet square. Its outer wall 
consisted of the ship’s side, broken by several round 
port-holes about a foot in diameter, and a gaping 
gun-port through which an ugly five-inch cannon 
projected. Overhead were the steel beams support¬ 
ing the deck above. Along the lower edges of these 
beams were steel hooks to which the hammocks 
would be slung at night. The fore and after walls 
of the compartment were vertical bulkheads of steel 
placed to keep splinters of a shell exploding behind 
them from reaching the men in the adjoining gun 
crews. There was no inner wall at this part of the 
gun deck. But, through a forest of stanchions, 
Clem could see clear across to the port side of the 
ship to where other members of his draft were be¬ 
ing shown the messing and living spaces of Division 
Two. * 

‘‘We eat, sleep an’ live where there ain’t room 
to swing a kitten in, much less a cat! ” mumbled 
“ Growl ” Merriam, but not loud enough for the 
petty officer to hear—he had learned that much at 
Newport! “Why, down home, we give our pigs 
more room ’n that! ” 

Inwardly, Clem resented this speech. He had 
been on the First Line Battleship Alaska [assumed 


ABOARD A BATTLESHIP 125 

name] for just an hour and a half, and yet he took 
“ Growl’s ” words almost as a personal insult. The 
boatswain’s mate would have “ called down ” the 
speaker, and rightly, if he had heard the comment, 
but Clem had been through some sea training, al¬ 
ready. ^ 

In the Merchant Service he had often seen for 
himself the truth of the old deep-sea adage Grum¬ 
ble and go makes a good sailor.” Moreover, as he 
veiy well knew, Growl ” was the smartest of the 
six men of the draft who had been assigned to the 
First Division. 

So he only rejoined, cheerfully, under his breath: 

It looks about as big as a movie palace to me! 
You should have seen the quarters on the destroyer 
where I was for a week. Swing a kitten, you say. 
Growl? There wasn’t room to swing a microbe, 
there! ” 

The boatswain’s mate then led his men down a 
steel ladder to a lower deck. 

Here’s where you stow your gear,” he said, au¬ 
thoritatively. The jack-stays are yonder along 
the forrard bulkhead, and the hammock nettings are 
just outboard of them. Soon as I’m through with 
you, get your stuff and put it here. I don’t suppose 
I have to tell you to be orderly, because you’ve 


126 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


been through Newport, but you’ve got to outstep 
that, here. Disorder means a black mark on a man’s 
record, an’ you’ll be better off volunteerin’ to the 
cook to be boiled into ‘ dog’s body ’ (pease pudding) 
than gettin’ a black record on Division One, I’m 
sayin’! Now, hop! ” 

As a matter of fact, the new men had to move 
fast to get everything in place before the supper 
call, but Clem had already learned that moving fast 
was one of the prime essentials in the Navy. He 
did his best to be quick, but Growl ” had every¬ 
thing in order a good two minutes before him. 

You beat me to it. Growl! ” he admitted laugh¬ 
ingly. 

I jest hate work,” his chum declared, so I do 
it as fast as I can to get rid of it.” 

At which Clem smiled. He knew Growl’s ” kind, 
and he knew, too, that he would have to step lively 
himself if he wanted to keep a jump ahead of his 
grumbling shipmate. 

As the Alaska was not at sea, watches were not 
rigorously kept, and the larger part of the crew were 
at leisure after supper. True to his fixed ideas of 
winning promotion, right from the start, Clem im¬ 
mediately hunted up the library of the ship. 
Though in close quarters, the number of volumes 


ABOARD A BATTLESHIP 127 

was larger than he had expected. The greater part 
of the books were light matter for recreational read¬ 
ing, but there was a good substratum of solid 
stuff. 

Library duty is special duty, taken in rotation, 
and, for the time being, books were being given out 
by a young gob who had only come on the night 
before. The chaplain was there, but Clem was shy 
of speaking to him. He made bold to step up to a 
chief quartermaster, who was browsing about the 
shelves, and to ask his advice about books to carry 
on the work which he had begun at Newport. 

Now, the main difference between a seaman and 
a petty officer is that the seaman is supposed only 
to know his work and to do it, while the petty officer 
is expected to know everything that pertains to his 
own work and the branches attached and, especially, 
to help the seamen to do theirs. A petty officer is 
a real officer—although an enlisted man—and his 
work is of capital importance. Good petty officers 
are as essential to the Navy as good officers, them¬ 
selves. 

The quartermaster turned to the boy, put down 
his book, and asked a few sympathetic questions. 

I suppose you know, Derry,’’ he said, when the 
boy had explained his ambitions, “ that nearly all 


128 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

the men who go from us to try their examinations at 
Annapolis come from the ranks of petty officers. A 
seaman who hasn’t proved himself worthy of some 
rating or other- by the time he’s ready to go up to 
Annapolis shows a screw loose somewhere. The 
^ Rocks and Shoals ’ [Navy Regulations] don’t put 
it that way, but that’s what it amounts to. Now, 
have you any idea of what rating you want to try 
for? ” 

Yes, Chief. I’d like to go up for quartermaster, 
third. That’s why I thought you wouldn’t mind my 
asking you.” 

Why quartermaster? ” 

Because I was in the Merchant Service before I 
went to Newport, and I’ve done quite a bit of navi¬ 
gation, already. I figured, Chief, that if I could get 
to be navigating quartermaster on a destroyer, or 
something like that, it might be a good place to step 
up from, if I should make the rating.” 

“You wouldn’t get up to navigating quarter¬ 
master soon enough to make Annapolis! ” came the 
prompt reply. “ There’s an age limit—twenty. A 
navigating quartermaster is nearly always a man 
who is in the third or fourth term of enlistment. 
That isn’t the way to look at it. 

“ But you’re headed on another wrong tack, it 


ABOARD A BATTLESHIP 129 

seems to me, Derry. You want to get rid of the 
idea that there’s any resemblance between the Mer¬ 
chant Service and the Navy. There’s none at all. 
They’re both on the sea, that’s all. And navigation 
isn’t the important thing. It’s necessary, but it’s 
sort of taken for granted. Every ensign has to 
know his navigation from truck to keelson. 

No, you can take it from me, Derry, that the 
gunnery end has the surest wallop in the Navy. 
After all, the guns aren’t there to give us a chance 
to navigate; a ship is navigated so as to get a chance 
to use her guns, see? ” 

^^Yes, Chief, I see that all right. But I don’t 
know much about guns, except, of course, the theory 
that they gave us at Newport.” 

“ Which doesn’t amount to a hill o’ beans. A 
Training Station is only to give a man the general 
hang 0’ things, so that he won’t stub his own toes 
all the time when he comes aboard. If guns are the 
things you know least about, bone on that! An’ 
bone hard! ” He smiled grimly. There’s a fistful 
o’ stuff to be learned.” 

Did you ever think of going up for Annapolis, 
Chief? ” Clem asked curiously. 

Me? No! If I’m lucky, I may get warrant be¬ 
fore I quit. I’m in the Navy to stay. No, I’m not 


130 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

the Annapolis kind. It'd be a bad thing for the 
Navy if every enlisted man thought he was the 
stuff of which officers are made. That standard is 
kept almighty high! But if you are of the right 
kind, Derry, there’s a fair fighting chance for you. 
Talk to your petty officers all you can, and if you 
come along well, maybe, some months later on, your 
divisional officer will let you go to the Seaman Gun¬ 
ner’s School or some other of the special classes, to 
give you an additional opportunity. 

“ But you mustn’t make any mistake about spe¬ 
cialization in the Navy, Derry. There’s a lot of it, 
that’s sure, an’ there has to be. But, in each o’ the 
three branches o’ the Navy, the most valuable man 
is the one who’s got a decent knowledge of aU the 
different workings in that branch. You want to 
follow the Seaman Branch, eh? ” 

Yes-, Chief.” 

“ Do you know the ratings? ” 

Clem rattled them off: 

Master of arms, chief and first; boatswain’s 
mate, chief, first and second; coxswain; gunner’s 
mate, chief, first, second and third; torpedo-man, 
chief, first, second and third; turret captain, chief 
and first; quartermaster, chief, first, second and 
third; signalman, chief, first, second and third; fire- 


ABOARD A BATTLESHIP 131 

control man, chief and first; seaman, first, second 
and apprentice/’ 

The quartermaster smiled. 

The Newport stuff sticks, does it? Well now, 
Derry, how many of those have to do with gunnery 
and how many with seamanship? ” 

‘‘ Fourteen for gunnery. Chief,” said the boy after 
counting, and he named them. 

More’n that, Derry. A bos’un’s mate who 
doesn’t know anything about gunnery would be 
about as useful on board ship as a fish without fins 
in the water. Take my tip! Don’t read up on the 
things you’ve already got a good start on. Get some 
kind of a hang of the things you know least. The 
Navy’s an all-round job for an all-round man, at 
the beginning. You can specialize later. Here, I’ll 
make you up a list of a few books, for a starter.” 

Clem entered on his self-imposed studies with a 
vim, but, after a few days on board, he realized that 
he had set himself a tremendous task in his decision 
to try to get to Annapolis. He was thoroughly tired 
out after his day’s work, and it took a good deal of 
moral courage to go to his books when the other men 
were having their leisure. But his father’s words 
stuck in his memory, and every time they recurred 
to him, he gritted his teeth and went back to the 


132 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

grind. Then, too, the life itself was so pleasant, and, 
with all the ratings of petty officers between, an of¬ 
ficer seemed such a remote being! 

Clem was so enthusiastic about the Navy, after a 
few weeks on board the battleship, that it hardly oc¬ 
curred to him that every one did not feel the same 
way. Yet the Navy is not adapted to every one, 
nor is every one adapted to the Navy. That there 
was another side to the story came to his notice 
when he ran across a plaintive but half-humorous 
wail from one of the Boots ’’ to whom life on board 
was not an uninterrupted delight. 

This Boots wrote the following article for the 
weekly newspaper published on board the battle¬ 
ship, which article the editor accepted, probably, 
for the value of its classical English: 


Ihn not kicking, you understand, I’m just tell¬ 
ing you. A Boots on deck ain’t got a chance, not a 
chance! 

“ I come aboard with a full bag o’ clothes and a 
couple cartons o’ cigarettes. Try and bum a butt 
now! A four-eyed guy, by the name o’ Ponzi, told 
a whiskered cox’n called Dunn to take me. He took 
me all right—up forrard to hang up my bag, then 
out on the quarter-deck for a working party. That 
party lasted until 8 p. m., missed chow, no wash, no 
nuthin’! 


ABOARD A BATTLESHIP 133 

I got sleep after taps, when around come the 
same whiskers. 

‘ Up you come! ’ he yelled. ^ Report to the B. 
M. [boatswain’s mate] of the watch on the quarter¬ 
deck. That little party lasted until 3 a. m., with no 
time out, either. 

Before daylight I was up agin, this time on the 
forecastle. An important-looking guy gimme a 
scrub-brush, and then squirted water over the deck 
and snarled at me to scrub. I thought he was an 
Admiral, so I scrubbed away. (I found out, later, he 
was a seaman, 2c.) Well, I scrubbed-down, then 
squilgeed-down and swabbed-down, though I didn’t 
know, then, what it was all about. 

After everything was dry, up come twelve or 
fifteen leading seamen who couldn’t be expected to 
work. They were the bosses. One of them bossed 
the capstan, hatch, bitts, etc. Me, I cleaned them 
all. They loaned me to each other. 

Workin’ parties? The B. M.’s o’ the watch just 
holler out my name when the First Division is rep¬ 
resented. They’re safe in doing it, cause I’m always 
there, twenty times a day. Carry canteen stores, 
mail-bags, soda pop, spuds, onions, or hay for the 
Marines; it’s all the same to me, I move ’em all. 

Anchor watches? I’d have to ship over an’ then 
extend to stand all the watches my division officer 
has given me already. I just natcherly got a per¬ 
manent billet in the Marine compartment. 

Naw, I ain’t kicking, even if I do get a wash 
every third day and a bawling out every third min¬ 
ute. I’ll scrub the deck alone with fifteen foremen, 
one whiskered superintendent, and a general mana¬ 
ger who lives on a chest. 

But they can’t take my chow. I can grab that 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


134 

just as quick as the rest. They gotta let me sleep 
three or four hours every night, so what do I care 
even if I have lost all my whites except one under¬ 
shirt and a pair of sliders. I kin draw more, and 
they have to knock off work long enough to let me 
do that. 

I donT care how many times G. Q. [general quar¬ 
ters bugle] goes, the lower handling-room is a fine 
place to cork in and smoke a butt on the sly. Con¬ 
dition three, or condition ten, I don^t care; up here 
in the defense tower ain’t so bad, and I can look 
down and see the whiskered Dunn watch by the 
stack. 

“ I can’t be bothered, with only three years and 
eight months more to do! ” 

Clem chuckled as he read it, and thought that 
“ Boots ” was wise to write his little howl anony¬ 
mously. It might not have been healthy to spout 
it out to a boatswain’s mate with a voice like bugle 
practice and a fist like a ramming-block! 



U. S. S. Maryland. 

A Battleship. Battleships are named after States of the Union. 











Courtesy of U. S. Navy. 

Holystoning the Decks of a Battleship. 

Polishing the decks with stones and sand received its name because the stones resemble Bibles 


CHAPTER X 


AT SEA 

The routine stiffened as soon as the Alaska got to 
sea. Watches were rigorously kept, and the require¬ 
ments for efficiency in every branch of the service 
was moved up another notch. Clem had thought 
there were no more notches to reach. He soon 
learned that there were a good many. The Navy 
is not perfect, probably—to hear some petty officers 
dressing down the men, one would think that every¬ 
thing was wrong, from foretop to propelling-screw— 
but it is as good as the British Navy, and that is the 
highest word of praise on the Seven Seas. 

For one thing, the division of labor which, in 
port, had seemed unnecessarily detailed, now seemed 
entirely natural, for, though a first-line battleship 
is far from being at sea all the time, everything on 
board her is on an at sea basis. Before going 
into the Navy, Clem had sometimes wondered what 
on earth the officers could invent to keep twelve 
hundred men busy all the time; he was not afloat 
very long before he started wondering how many 

135 


136 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

different jobs a bluejacket would have to do in a 
day, to get the day^s work done. 

It took him a little time, for one thing, to realize 
the immense amount of work and responsibility 
which fell to the officers, even to the youngest en¬ 
signs, and his desire for Annapolis, which had 
dropped rather to a sturdy sense of duty for the sake 
of his father, now began to flame up into grim de¬ 
termination to get there, for his own sake, and a 
flaming desire to show himself worthy. 

In port, there had seemed far too many officers. 
At sea.—^well, he saw that a good many of them 
were solidly at work almost every minute that they 

were not asleep. There was, first of all, and chief 

• 

of all, the captain, absolute master of more than a 
thousand lives and a couple of million dollars of 
Uncle Sam’s property, as well as the responsible 
head of America’s honor wherever his ship happened 
to be. There was the executive officer, with the 
rank of commander, who did just about four times 
as much work as the busiest man on the ship and 
who scrutinized everything personally and perpetu¬ 
ally, from the fire-box to the fighting-top; so much 
so that the men had a sayings 

Our Exec, is twins; they keep watch an’ watch, 
that^s why you never see him sleep.” 


AT SEA 


137 

Next under him came the lieutenant-commanders, 
each one responsible for the perfection of his branch 
of the work of the ship: the chief engineer, the gun¬ 
nery officer, the navigator, the first lieutenant, the 
surgeon, the paymaster, and the chaplain. On the 
seaman side, there came next the officers of the 
watch; on the artificer side came the watch officers 
of the “ Black Gang,^’ engineer, electrician, and so 
forth; while, in each of the special branches, each 
officer had his assistants. 

The start of the Alaska had been impressive, and 
Clem, who had not yet been given any special sea 
detail, had an opportunity to notice the snappiness 
and accuracy with which every order was executed. 
He had learned a great deal about signalling and 
could read every signal that was run up, so that he 
was able to follow every move. He had been to 
sea, before, too, and knew what an unwieldy thing 
a shipds to handle. Here were vessels thirty and 
forty times the'size of anything he had ever sailed 
on, heayy and ponderous beyond imagining, which 
must manoeuvre with the utmost exactitude. For, 
as he realized, when the ships began to move, every 
vessel had to pass out between the breakwater in 
her turn, at the proper distance from the ship ahead 
of her and at identically the same course and speed. 


138 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

There was no going faster or slower, there was no 
“ writing one’s name ” in the wake made by the ship 
in the water. 

Clem saw the reason why a signal is never obeyed 
when it is hoisted up, but always when it is pulled 
down. A signal hoisted on the signal bridge of the 
flagship must be repeated by every ship of the fleet, 
and, as no ship knows at what minute the Admiral 
may give the order, the signal gang stands pantingly 
ready, with its eye on the signal quartermaster, who, 
in turn, waits on the signal officer, who has his eye 
glued on the signal yard-arm of the leading ship. 

The flags are hoisted to indicate the manoeuvre 
which is to be made. As the flags are seen to come 
down on the flagship, the signal quartermaster ex¬ 
plodes the single word Execute! ” to his gang, and. 
the signals are brought down with a run. At that 
instant, every ship follows the order. In that way, 
and in that way alone, can the whole fleet, large 
vessels and small, be made to act as a single unit, 
a vast instrument, all the keys of which are manipu¬ 
lated by the Admiral or the Fleet Officer in Com¬ 
mand. 

It was when the battleships moved out into clear 
water that Clem had a chance to see what terrible 
war-engines they are. Big guns pointing forward, 


AT SEA 


139 

big guns pointing astern, long-reaching guns abeam, 
and little business-looking machine-guns in the tops 
—their mere appearance told the story of their pon¬ 
derous might. What Connolly has pointed out: 

This frightful power need never wait on wind or 
tide, nor be hindered in execution by any weather 
much short of a hurricane,’’ is assured when one 
can see big steamers heaving and pitching on the 
whitecaps, while these battleships are lying as im¬ 
movable, almost, as sea-walls. Connolly adds: 

After the battleships come the armored cruisers, 
riding the waters almost as ponderously as the bat¬ 
tleships and hardly less powerful, but much faster 
on the trail; and they may run or fight as they 
choose. After examining them, long and swift-look¬ 
ing, with no more space between the decks than is 
needed for machinery, stores, armament, and lung- 
play for live men, the inevitable reflection occurs 
that the advance of mechanical power must color 
our dreams of romance in future. 

Surely the old ways are gone. Imagine one of 
the old three-deckers aiming to work to windward 
of one of these cruisers in a gale, and if, by any 
special dispensation of Providence she were allowed 
to win the weather berth, imagine her trying, while 
she rolled down to her middle deck, to damage one 


140 WITH THE U. S. NAVY. 

of these belted brutes, that, in the meantime, would 
be leisurely picking out the particular plank by 
which she intended to introduce into her enemy’s 
vitals a weight of explosive metal sufficient in all 
truth to blow her out of the water.” 

All the old fighting methods are gone and out of 
use now. There are no grappling-irons on board a 
modern warship, and the cry Prepare to Repel 
Boarders,” is as much forgotten as the crack of the 
whips of the slave-drivers at the galley-oarsmen of 
a Roman war trireme. There is no cutlass drill, 
any more, and the days have long passed by when 
a man-o’-war’s man could be described as having 
been born with every hair a rope yarn, every tooth 
a marlin-spike, every finger a fish-hook, and his 
blood right good Stockhollum tar.” 

Where, of old times, a man who could read and 
write was contemptuously looked upon by his ship¬ 
mates as a sea-lawyer,” modern Navy ships possess 
schools with a thorough curriculum. Where, in the 
good old days ” a sailor who had any religion would 
be made to run the gauntlet of his fellows for a 
Holy Joe,” every battleship now carries a chap¬ 
lain. 

Something, but not all of this Clem realized as 
he saw the fleet steaming out of port. After the 


AT SEA 


141 

cruisers came all the craft of comparatively small 
tonnage and power: the gunboats, transports and 
supply ships; and, almost forgotten, the monitors, 
riding undisturbedly, like squat little forts afloat, 
with freeboard so low that, with a slightly undulat¬ 
ing sea, a turtle could swim aboard.” 

And then came the destroyers, the speedy fight¬ 
ers, fast as a greyhound, wicked as a ferret, and 
looking every letter of their sinister name. There is 
dignity in a battleship, there is the grace of easy 
strength in a cruiser, but a destroyer—with every¬ 
thing stripped from her that makes for comfort or 
for beauty—is obviously made to bite, and those 
long-barrelled weapons, peering from hooded ports, 
suggested the heads of cobras with venomed fangs 
ever ready to strike. ^ 

Nor was the boy less interested in the submarines, 
though they were not coming out with the fleet. A 
“ sea baby ” calls for imagination. There is not 
much to show, nothing to suggest alarming thoughts. 
Yet the innocent-looking submarine can cripple, and 
often sink, the biggest battleship, and it takes all 
the power of destroyers and scouting sea-planes to 
keep them away. 

The proportionate strength of the U. S. Navy, at 
sea, has changed enormously since the famous Limi- 


142 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

tation of Armament Conference at Washington in 
1922. By that Five-Power international agreement, 
the navies of the United States and Britain must re¬ 
main at approximately the same strength in capital 
ships, Japan is allowed a fleet of three-flfths that 
size, and France and Italy are allowed fleets of 
one-third that size. This is known as the 5—5—3— 
1.67 plan. But this limitation applied only to bat¬ 
tleships and aircraft-carriers. 

There is no limit to the number of light cruisers 
which may be built, and the race for building these 
craft has gone on more feverishly than ever. Four 
years after the signing of that agreement, Great 
Britain had 57 cruisers built or building, Japan had 
28, the United States 12, Italy 12, and France 9. In 
destroyers, nominally America holds the flrst rank 
with 289 against 203 for Great Britain, but a good 
many of the U. S. destroyers were hastily-built 
emergency craft, and only 105 are in commission; 
Japan has 92, Italy 49, and France 39. In fleet sub¬ 
marines, over 1,000 tonnage each, Japan is far 
ahead, having 20 such craft, while the British Em¬ 
pire has 9, the United States 7, Italy 4 and France 
0 . In first line submarines the United States leads, 
with 50 against Japan’s 39, while the British Em¬ 
pire has 34, France 29, and Italy 16. The naval air 


AT SEA 


143 

strength of the five signatory nations is very closely 
at the treaty basis. 

Ships, however, are of little use without crews, 
and the Washington Conference did not limit per¬ 
sonnel. In this direction, the Japanese Navy is by 
far in the best position of the Five Powers. The 
figures are as follows: officers and men: British 
107,899, American 94,148, Japanese 72,622, French 
58,496, Italian 42,779. The Japanese Fleet, too, is 
slightly more highly officered than any other; in pro¬ 
portion to needs the American Navy is the most 
heavily undermanned. It will require an addition 
of more than 25,000 officers and men in the U. S. 
Navy to arrive at the treaty proportion of person¬ 
nel with Japan. 

In submarines, Japan has more actual vessels and 
more powerful vessels in actual count, and is build¬ 
ing more than the United States, quite irrespective 
of treaty proportions. Naval building competition 
is far from being ended, in spite of the Washington 
Conference. The Navy is America’s first line of de¬ 
fense, and it must be kept at its highest possible 
strength in order to remain so. 

Clem’s first week at sea brought him a grievous 
disappointment. Because of his thorough knowl¬ 
edge of signals he had asked the boatswain’s mate 


144 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

to ask his divisional officer to give him a chance on 
the signal gang, and Lieutenant Lankester had 
agreed. Clem could easily have taken a second 
signalman’s rating, so far as book-work went. But 
he could not satisfy the signal quartermaster. The 
boy’s mind was as quick as a steel trap, but his 
hands were not. Do his utmost—and he tried as 
hard as he could—^he was not limber enough for 
the work, and he was let out. 

Nor was he able to make an especially good show¬ 
ing in small arms work. There was a good deal of 
conceit in Clem’s make-up, and he had expected to 
be able to do better than all the other fellows, with 
ease. He found that this was very far from true. 

In general, he made a good-enough record. He 
was never rebuked for untidiness, he was never late, 
he kept up an unflagging good humor, and he never 
forgot anything that he had been told. He kept 
down his disappointment, as best he could, and dug 
steadily at his books. 

The question worried him a good deal, for he re¬ 
membered what the quartermaster had told him 
about the winning of ratings, and the boy was forced 
to admit to himself that several of the men of his 
division showed up better than he did at drills. He 
knew all the drills thoroughly, he did his work in 


AT SEA 


145 

them without a hitch, but he could not quite come 
up to the speed that was required of the record 
First Division. 

At first the boatswain’s mate and the other petty 
officers would try to stir hun to quicker action by 

bawling him out,” but that was of no use at all. 
Clem moved as quickly as he could; he could not 
go quicker. He was just made that way. 

At last, one day, when, in an Abandon Ship ” 
drill, he had caused his boat to be two seconds late, 
by fumbling over a fall, the boatswain’s mate let 
into him in such a way that Clem could not restrain 
a disgruntled: 

Oh! What’s the use! ” 

Rather to his surprise, the petty officer did not 
come back with another fire-barrage of swift re¬ 
proaches, but let him alone. 

Later in the day, his divisional officer stopped him 
on the deck. 

Derry,” he said, “ I’ve a word to say to you.” 

Yes, sir,” responded the boy, wearily, but setting 
himself straight for the rebuke which he expected to 
receive. 

The boatswain’s mate tells me that it was be¬ 
cause of you that the Second Division beat us at 
boat drill this morning.” 


146 WITH THE U. S. NAVY. 

Yes, sir; I’m sorry to say it was.” 

Why?” 

The fall was snarled, sir, and I couldn’t get it 
free quickly enough.” 

And you were let out of the signal gang a couple 
of weeks ago, because you couldn’t handle yourself 
quickly enough, or so the signal quartermaster told 
me.” 

Yes, sir.” 

And you’re feeling pretty bad about it, eh, 
Derry? ” 

There was a kindly inflection in the voice which 
surprised Clem. So the officer understood! He 
gulped. 

“Yes, sir; very.” 

“That’s natural; but the signal quartermaster 
told me that you knew more about flags than any 
apprentice seaman who had ever come on the 
bridge.” 

“ He did, sir! ” 

“ Yes, and, what’s more, Derry, he was sorrier 
than you were when he had to let you go. But he 
has his standard to maintain, as well.” 

“ I’m very sorry, sir. I’ve tried as hard as I 
could.” 

“Do you suppose I don’t know it? I have an 


AT SEA 


147 

interest in you, Derry; I have in every man of my 
division. I try to make good sailormen of them all. 
But I shouldn’t know much about men if I expected 
them to be all the same. And I just want to tell you 
not to get discouraged. 

Remember this, Derry: the Navy is a big organi¬ 
zation, with more different kinds of work in it than 
you’ve dreamed of, yet. There’s a place in it for 
every sure-fire American who is ready to learn and 
willing to work. Some men are made for head-work, 
and some for hand-work; some only for routine, and 
others for initiative. Some are better for work on 
board ship, others for duties ashore. You have made 
an exceptionally fine record in your school work, so 
I have been told, and you’re liked, personally, by 
the petty officers and the men, even if you do get 
a trimming-down occasionally. Don’t worry, Derry, 
if you haven’t found the place where you fit best; 
we’ll find it for you before you’re done. In any 
case, don’t weaken! ” 

He passed along the deck, and Clem looked after 
him. His disheartenment had gone from him like a 
sea through the lee scuppers. 

If that’s the kind of men Annapolis turns out,” 
he said, with a final glance of respect and esteem 
at his lieutenant, " I’ll get there! ” 


CHAPTER XI 


FOURTEEN-INCH BABIES 

“ What’s a gun, Derry? ” 

Taken by surprise at this bombshell question, for 
it was after supper, and the boy was reading up on 
his mathematics, Clem turned to face his gunner’s 
mate, and blurted out: 

A thing to fire shells off with! ” 

The gunner’s mate rocked on his heels as though 
in pain. 

Can I get you a teething-ring, or have you been 
six months in the Navy? ” he inquired. 

But Clem had already recovered his poise, and 
was grinning, anxiously but cheerfully. 

You took me by surprise, Chief. I should have 
asked what kind of a gun you meant.” 

“ It would have shown more sense. Suppose I 
put the question a different way: How many differ¬ 
ent kinds o’ guns are there aboard the Old Crock [a 
navy man’s familiar designation for his own ship] ? ” 

Only three kinds. Major-calibre guns in tur¬ 
rets, secondary batteries on the decks, and machine- 
guns in the tops.” 


148 


FOURTEEN-INCH BABIES 149 

An^ how many major calibre do we carry? 

Ten 14-inch, Chief. Our turrets are all twin- 
gun, but some ships carry triple-gim turrets. Some 
have 16-inch guns, too.’^ 

And whaCs a turret? 

“ A turret,’^ said Clem, trying to choose his words 
carefully, is the upper part of a barbette which 
revolves in order that the big-calibre guns may be 
aimed at an enemy 

An’ what’s a barbette? ” 

“ A barbette is a circular, stationary, armored fort, 
going ’way down into the hull of the ship, so that, 
in times of battle, all the big-gun mechanisms and 
all the powder magazines shall be doubly protected 
from injury, and, at the same time, that if there 
is an explosion in a barbette the rest of the ship may 
escape.” 

These guns, are they fixed in the tiuret? ” 

No, Chief. They’re on trunnions, and fixed for 
very delicate adjustment.” 

And do you know the parts of a gun? ” 

Clem started to rattle off a list of names of mech¬ 
anisms, but the gunner’s mate stopped him. 

“No, I mean the principal parts.” 

“ Oh, yes. There’s the mount, which is the part 
between the deck and the gun itself, which has got 


150 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

in it all the mechanism for training elevation, re¬ 
coil and counter-recoil; the breech which has all 
the mechanism for loading the shells and firing the 
gun; and the barrel with its rified bore/' 

‘‘ And how heavy is a shell, Derry? " 

I can figure it out. Chief. It’s the cube of the 
diameter of the bore divided by two, they told us 
that at the Training Station. Let’s see, fourteen 
times fourteen is—is: one, nine, six; and fourteen 
times 196-” 

‘^Do it in your,head, Derry,” said the gunner’s 
mate, as he saw the boy reaching for a pencil he 
had stuck in the back pages of his book. 

“ Thirteen hundred and seventy-two pounds. 
That’s nearly three-fourths of a ton! ” 

‘‘Yes. But that’s only an approximate method 
of figuring; shells aren’t quite so heavy as that, 
though nearly. At that, they’re not exactly the 
sort of thing you can slip into your pocket! I’m 
mentioning the weight so that you can get an idea 
of what it means to handle them. An’ do you know 
about what’s the time that is reckoned for loading 
and firing one of those 14-inch babies? ” 

“No, Chief. I haven’t an idea.” 

“Fifteen seconds. F-i-f-t-e-e-n seconds! The 
shell-handling men have got to handle a three-quar- 



FOURTEEN-INCH BABIES 151 

ter ton weight, an^ the powder men have got to 
snitch their bags of powder across with such pre¬ 
cision an’ method that everything has got to get 
away clear in fifteen seconds. An’ then they’re 
handling dangerous stuff, too. You haven’t been in 
turret work, yet, but you’ll be sent there, some day, 
sure. Do you know the extreme range? ” 
Fourteen-inch gun, fourteen miles. Chief.” 
Point-blank range? ” 

“ No, with elevation.” 

How many degrees? ” 

I—I don’t know.” 

“ Do you know how much elevation you can get 
in a turret? ” 

I’m not sure. Chief. About 35 degrees, I think.” 
That’s near enough, but 35 degrees elevation 
with a 14-inch gun will give you a bit more than 
fourteen miles range. Now, if you could poke those 
guns up to 45 degrees, what would happen? ” 

“ The shells would go a lot farther.” 

And would they do as much harm? ” 

Why, yes. Chief, every bit. The rending force 
of a shell doesn’t depend on its speed, like solid 
shot, but on its explosive power.” 

‘‘ And what would be the range of a 14-inch gun 
at an elevation of 45 degrees? ” 


152 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

The boy started to try to figure out the problem, 
but the gunner’s mate shook his head. 

No use trying, Derry. There are a lot of other 
factors to be considered; leave that until you’ve 
learned your ballistics. But the proof o’ plum-duff 
is in the eating. Naval 14-inch guns have already 
done a good deal of actual service at a range of 
twenty-two miles. Did you know that? ” 

No, Chief! ” 

Never hear about the naval guns on railroad 
mounts on the French front in the World War? ” 

I was only a kid when the war ended,” said 
Clem apologetically. “ Wish I’d been big enough to 
join it, then! ” 

The gunner’s mate smiled. 

That’s the line o’ talk! Well, I’ll tell you about 
them, Derry, first, because a Navy man ought to 
know what the Navy has done, and what Navy 
guns are capable of doing, an’, secondly, because 
every seaman aboard has got to learn to handle 
them. 

As a matter of fact, landsmen as a rule don’t 
know that the regulation 14-inch United States 
naval gun showed itself to have been the most 
powerful weapon used on either side during the 
World War, knocking sky-high every English, 


FOURTEEN-INCH BABIES 153 

French, or German piece of ordnance. That isn’t 
bluffing, Derry, it’s a solid fact. 

Whenever you get put on turret duty, I want 
you to keep in your head that these big guns aren’t 
for show, an’ it isn’t any guesswork as to what they 
can do. We could have punched holes in any of the 
enemy’s big battleships, as we’d have liked to do, 
but they only came out of their base once—at the 
Battle of Jutland. So we turned our spare guns into 
land artillery. They had their chance there, and 
they showed up finely. 

Here’s what started it all, Derry. All through 
the war, long before America joined in, specially- 
made German long-range guns—9-inch, most of 
them—kept on bombarding Dunkirk at a distance 
of 25 miles. They were most annoying; every one 
admitted that. There was danger that if Germany 
could increase their number and advance them a 
bit nearer, she might make it unpleasant for other 
Channel ports. That was one thing. 

Then, of course, there was ‘ Big Bertha ’—it’s 
not known, just exactly, what she was yet, though, 
since the war, it has been stated that she was a 
naval 14-inch choked down to a 9-inch bore—^which 
threw shells into Paris from over fifty miles away. 
But all those German long-range guns had one dis- 




WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


154 

advantage. They fired from fixed emplacements, 
and mobility is an essential thing for any attacking 
gun. 

Almost as soon as the United States came in to 
take a hand in the fighting—and, in fairness to our 
Allies, I think we’ll have to admit that we didn’t 
come in until the tail end of the war—^England and 
France began to talk to us about a mobile naval 
battery. The British Navy needed all her ships 
and all her guns, to keep the German high fleet from 
cornin’ out, for the Germans are cracker jack gunners 
an’ their battleship crews were mighty near as good 
as our own. 

So, when we were asked to join in, and join in 
quick, we did it. We had some 14-inch guns ready, 
ready to be put on some new cruisers which weren’t 
built yet. What was more, the U. S. Navy has a 
cracker jack record for gunnery, and the British knew 
it. 

^^You remember, Derry, we entered the war in 
April, 1917. In November, the Naval Bureau of 
Ordnance presented a scheme for naval guns on 
railway mounts, already worked out.” 

But that was seven months afterward. Chief! ” 
“ It was, Derry. I told you that America was 
very slow getting started, unbelievably slow. The 


FOURTEEN-INCH BABIES 155 

ships of the Navy weren’t. You may remember that 
when our destroyers got across and their officers 
went to the British Admiral to report, he asked 
them how many days it would take them to over¬ 
haul their ships and get them ready for sea. The 
ranking officer responded: 

‘ We are ready, now, sir.’ 

And they went out that afternoon! Oh, the 
Navy, at sea., wasn’t so slow! 

But let’s get back to our guns. In December, 
the naval gun factory got out the detailed plans 
for the railway mounts for these naval guns. The 
first mount was ready in April, 1918, and the first 
detachment of American naval officers and men de¬ 
tailed to those batteries sailed in May. Others in 
June. Captain—^now Rear-Admiral Plunkett, who 
was detailed to command the whole, arrived in 
France in July. Ammunition reached in August. 
The first shot was fired in September. But I’m run¬ 
ning ahead of the yam. 

“ Actual assembly of the parts began in France 
in July. You can just about make a guess, Derry, 
how sore the officers and constructors were when 
they came to do their work and found that all the 
construction blue-prints were missing! ” 

What happened to them? Stolen? ” 


156 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

Oh, no; some one had just forgot them. Every 
one thought the other fellow had them. There was 
a good deal of that sort of thing during the war. It 
was serious, though, for the Germans were still going 
strong at that time. It was just before the Allies 
got them going on the run. 

Luckily, most of the officers and a good many 
of the men who’d been detailed to the manufactur¬ 
ing plants had kept personal note-books, and they 
had been working there, themselves. These guns, of 
course, they knew from stem to stern already. What 
with the note-books, good memories, some guess¬ 
work and the Navy’s luck, the mounts and guns were 
got together at last. 

But it took time. The Allies were wild over the 

delay, the French especially, for it got on their nerve 

not to be able to reply to ' Big Bertha.’ It did a 

good deal of damage, that freak gun of the Germans, 

% 

but the worst of it was in the morale. And, once 
the whistle blew to set that U. S. naval train a-going, 
I miss my guess if there wouldn’t have been a rous¬ 
ing cheer from all the front-line trenches, if the boys 
had known. 

Those naval 14-inch babies were a real comfort 
to the French. They were something tangible, for 
the newspapers had been writin’ first-page stories 


FOURTEEN-INCH BABIES 157 

of our ordnance facilities, and our ammunition 
plants, and our quantity production, and all the rest 
of it. The newspapers reached France; the guns 
didnT. So the naval batteries were a sort of ful¬ 
filment of long-delayed American promises. 

This is the way Admiral Sims put it: 

“ ‘ All along the route, the French populace 
greeted the great battery train with one great cheer, 
and at the towns and villages all along the line, the 
girls decorated the long muzzles of the guns with 
flowers.’ 

The gobs got their share of the flowers, too, but 
it wouldn’t have been discipline for the Admiral to 
have put that in his report. 

^ Expertly as this unusual train had been cam¬ 
ouflaged, the German airplane observers soon de¬ 
tected its approach. As it neared its objective, the 
shells that had been falling on Paris ceased; before 
the Americans could get to work, the Germans had 
removed their mighty weapon, leaving nothing but 
an emplacement as a target for our shells. Though 
our men were therefore deprived of the privilege of 
destroying this famous long-range rifle, it is appar¬ 
ent that their arrival saved Paris from further 
bombardment, for nothing was heard of the gun for 
the rest of the war.’ ” 

We called their bluff, then! ” cried Clem delight¬ 
edly. 


158 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

called it good and hard, an’ the Germans 
threw up their hands, right then and there. JVe 
might be late, but we did something. 

“ Now, as you know, Derry, 14-inch shells can’t 
be bought in a ten-cent store, an’ there was the 
transportation to be considered besides. Those 
shells weren’t to be wasted; it was important to 
keep them for special purposes. They weren’t in¬ 
tended for use against troops. It’s about as hard 
to hit a man with a 14-inch shell at 22 miles as it 
is to go gunning for a high-flying New Jersey mos¬ 
quito with an anti-aircraft ‘ Archie.’ 

“ Their main business was to play hob with im¬ 
portant communication junctions. Battery 1 started 
in at Soissons to bombard the railroad yards around 
Laon. After just seven rounds, that junction was a 
heap o’ scrap iron, and more rails were stickin’ up¬ 
end in the air than were lying flat on the ground. 
That’s more important than it sounds, Derry, for 
big aimies have got to have a constant supply of 
food and ammunition. If they don’t get it, they’re 
beaten or they’ve got to retreat. The Germans 
couldn’t repair the lines with those 14-inch callers 
dropping in unexpected-like, so they retreated. 

Battery No. 2 went into action in the Compiegne 
Forest on September 6, 1918. And here’s where the 


FOURTEEN-INCH BABIES 159 

Navy, to my way of thinking, put it all over the 
Army. We’d been spending millions to try to man¬ 
ufacture cannon and big guns and to get ’em to 
France. None of them got there. At least, the Al¬ 
lies had over 800,000 pieces of artillery; we had 104, 
exactly, and most of those didn’t see a month’s ac¬ 
tion. 

'‘But the Navy got this record, at least! U. S. 
Navy Battery No. 2 shot the first American shell 
from an American gun manned by Americans on 
the western front during the World War! ” 

" Bully for us! ” 

"Yes—^but it’s only fair to remember that the 
first American gun wasn’t fired until after the Ger¬ 
mans had already begun to retreat. The whole of 
August was a succession of Allied victories, and the 
Hindenberg Line was taken in the first days of 
September. Some of our fellows were mighty sore 
over it; they wanted to get into the big fighting, 
earlier, when they really could have claimed some 
share of the victory, on land. There wasn’t any 
question as to the value of our work in laying the 
North Sea mine barrage. 

" Batteries 3, 4 and 5 didn’t get going till October, 
five weeks before the Armistice, and it wasn’t until 
October 28, thirteen days before the Armistice that 


i6o WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

they got to working right. They were sent to re¬ 
lieve Verdun. 

The Metz-Sedan railway line, along the Ger¬ 
man front, had, all through the war, been one of the 
chief helps to the Germans in the terrific drives they 
made on that part o’ the front. The Allies had done 
their most to smash the line by air raids, but the 
Germans were sharply on the watch and few Allied 
bombing planes ever got within reach o’ the railroad 
tracks. We did. As soon as our 14-inch beauties 
got posted, they started to hammer that line until 
it couldn’t have told itself whether it was a railroad 
track, a barbed-wire fence, or a junk-yard. 

“ If the naval batteries had been at Verdun a few 
months earlier, I think it’s safe to say that the lives 
of 30,000 men would have been saved.” 

Clem looked grave. 

Do you mean it. Chief? ” 

“ If I doubled the figure, I’d be within the mark. 
There are thousands upon thousands of graves at 
Verdun that wouldn’t be there to-day, if the naval 
guns had got there earlier. But there’d be thousands 
more graves than there are, if we hadn’t got there 
when we did, that’s one comfort! The French at 
Verdun realized it, but I don’t know that America 
ever has. 


FOURTEEN-INCH BABIES i6i 


General Pershing himself wrote: 

“ ‘ The naval battery had cut the enemy’s main 
line of communications, and nothing but a surrender 
or an armistice could save the army from complete 
disaster. Even when there were no direct hits, it 
was established that German traffic had to stop dur¬ 
ing the bombardment when firing was actually tak¬ 
ing place, and for some time after it ended.’ ” 

Then the American Navy won the war! ” 

Derry,” warned the gunner’s mate, leave that 
kind o’ talk to the know-nothings. The Allies won 
the war, an’ that goes for every man of all the Allied 
nations—an’ every woman, too^—who did his or her 
bit. But I think, without bragging, it’s fair to say 
that the added weight of American man-power 
caused the war to be won by the Allies, an’ our boys 
would never have got to France at all, but for the 
Navy. That’s another part of the story, and it 
doesn’t need to be told, for every one knows it. 

Oh, the naval guns made good, there’s no doubt 
of that. They fired a total of 782 rounds, and al¬ 
though they were beginning to get used up, not one 
of ’em got out of order. Some of the spotting was 
done by planes, of course, but a lot of it was blind 
firing because of low visibility for the planes. 
Blind firing or not, the guns got what they went 


i62 with the U. S. navy 

after. The accuracy of that shooting sure made the 
enemy squirm. 

Captain Plunkett’s report condenses the whole 
thing in a few words, Derry. He said: 


^ You have no idea what the extra few thousand 
yards—it happened to be a few miles—^means in 
this game, both tactically and strategically. The 
difference opens up areas of destruction which are 
clearly beyond the range of anything in existence 
here. It brings about situations for the enemy 
which are very difficult for him to handle, and which 
have a very direct effect upon tactics and strat¬ 
egy. 

^ Four years of this war have been largely de¬ 
voted to meeting the so-called German offensive; 
and now that the Allies have taken the offensive, 
it is necessary that we keep the Germans guessing 
all the time. The great element of surprise involved 
in the additional range has a very strong effect upon 
the enemy in everything he is doing or plans to do; 
and, with rapid movements from place to place, he 
never knows when he will have to pull his freight 
or leave it for the Allies to grab.’ 

I’m telling you all this, Derry, to give you an 
idea of the power o’ these guns that you’re going to 
be handling. Of course, the 14-inch an’ 16-inch guns 
are intended for sea warfare, and that means even 
more accuracy. There’s no camouflaging a fleet or 
an enemy battleship. A smoke-screen only does it 


FOURTEEN-INCH BABIES 163 

after a fashion, for the smoke-screen itself shows 
that the enemy is there. 

‘‘ In land firing, if you miss a railroad junction by 
a quarter of a mile and blow a locomotive round¬ 
house to smithereens—as we did—you may be doing 
just as much good, or more. But if you miss a bat¬ 
tleship by just one yard, why the 14-inch baby only 
makes a hole in the water and gives a scare to the 
fishes. Yet it is apt to sink the biggest battleship 
afloat, if it falls right. 

That^s why there’ll always be more stress laid on 
gunnery, in the Navy, than on anything else. The 
whole aim an’ purpose of a battleship is to trans¬ 
port those large calibre guns to the place where they 
can be most effectively used against the enemy, and 
it’s not much use to have the guns there, unless they 
can be shot straight an’ fast; straight, mostly. 

“ Santiago Bay taught us that. Not five per cent, 
of our shots hit the enemy, and we were firing be¬ 
tween three and four thousand yards most of the 
time. Target practice isn’t battle, of course, but the 
Spanish-American War was nearly thirty years ago. 
Guns and men have improved since that, as well as 
methods of firing. Why, Turret No. I, right here, 
has made a hundred-per record of hits at more’n 
double the distance used in the Spanish American 


i 64 with the U. S. NAVY 

War, and I’ll bet on ten-per-cent, hits at four times 
the distance. So you see! 

Get it clearly fixed in your head, Derry, that the 
capital ships of a fleet are what have got to be 
mainly reckoned with when it comes to the final 
fighting. Guns are no earthly use on a ship which 
isn’t running like clockwork, down to the smallest 
detail, but the whole aim and purpose of the ship 
is the handling of her guns. 

That’s why you’re to report to the turret cap¬ 
tain, to-morrow.” 



Big Guns on the U. S. S. Colorado. 









International Neiosreel Photo. 


The Mouth of a Giant. 

Direct front view of one of the fourteen-inch guns of the 

U. S. S. Pennsylvania. 




CHAPTER XII 


FLASHING HEROISM 

It was with a very different feeling and with 
infinitely more confidence in himself that Clem re¬ 
ported to the turret captain for his new station at 
‘‘ General Quarters ’’ directly after muster, the next 
morning. The kindly encouragement of his divi¬ 
sional officer and the long talk with the gunner^s 
mate, the night before—the latter especially—had 
shown him the tremendous part which the petty 
officers play in the building up of the spirit of the 
younger men of the Navy. 

He was beginning to wonder if they were not 
more important than the officers, themselves. A 
natural mistake, for he had not yet come into much 
personal contact with any officer save the officer of 
his division, and him he had magnified into an ex¬ 
ception out of all proportion. As he came to find 
out later, most of them were like that. 

Turret drill was a thousandfold more complicated, 
taken in its entirety, than Clem had ever imagined, 
but, as there were a hundred men to each turret, 
he soon found out that every man^s work was so def- 

165 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


166 

initely laid out for him that the task of each was 
strictly limited and even small. Moreover, there 
was just one way to do it, and no other, in order that 
there should be no lost motion. 

The turret captain started him off in one of the 
powder magazines, a stuffy room deep down in the 
barbette, where a part of the powder is stored. His 
duty was simple. He had to handle the bags of 
powder and to shove them through a shielded flap 
in the steel door that led from the magazine into the 
handling room. For drill purposes, these “ powder- 
bags’’ were blocks of wood loaded with lead, cov¬ 
ered with red and black silk cloth, exactly the same 
size and weight as the real bags of powder, so that, 
in time of battle action or target practice, no man 
would be conscious of the difference of even an ounce 
of weight. 

The bags were heavy, but Clem was muscular 
enough for his age, and life in the Navy had made 
him fit and keen. The weight, in a way, only added 
zest to the handling, for it called for an exertion, 
and, as every trainer of men knows, it is far easier to 
do a hard thing well than a too easy one. Besides, 
the older seaman near him gave him such precise 
instructions in the way of moving the bags that he 
could not help but follow. 


FLASHING HEROISM 167 

^'Take a shine to this, you! '' he said to Clem. 

Mr. Lankester wants quickness in these magazines, 
but he doesn’t want hurry. They’re two very differ¬ 
ent things, lad, though everybody doesn’t know it; 
I didn’t, till I came on old Division One. Speed, 
but not hurry! Remember, this is high explosive 
we’re handlin’, not bags o’ spuds. Keep that in 
mind! A powder-bag ain’t noways intended for a 
football, an’ droppin’ it on a steel deck is a durn 
quick road to the bottom o’ the sea. 

Now, I’ll show you just how to do it, but I want 
you, before you start to watch mq, to remember 
that if you don’t use your head, if you’ve got one, 
your hands won’t be worth more than a squilgee 
with the bristles worn out. Spry ness in a powder 
magazine doesn’t mean quick motion so much as it 
does quick thinking. Here’s how she goes-” 

He illustrated the movement, and made Clem re¬ 
peat it a dozen times, like a golf professional teach¬ 
ing a beginner to “ carry through.” 

“ Do it just that way,” he went on, and don’t 
do it any other. Don’t vary your heave the littlest 
bit. It’s timed to the fraction of a second. If you’re 
half a second too late in startin’, because you haven’t 
caught the word quick enough, you can’t make it up 
by hurryin’, an’, if you try to, you’ll run risks for 



i68 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

yourself, for the rest o’ the gang, for the whole tur¬ 
ret an’ maybe the ship. Powder is powder, lad, not 
lobscouse. 

When you hear ‘ Commence Firing! ’ be ready. 
At the word o’ command you begin, not as soon 
afterward as you can, but on the jump! An’ jump 
means jump! Your arms begin to move at the same 
moment that your ear-drums register. Concentrate! 
That goes, not only here in the magazines, but for 
every job in turret work. The man who wins in 
this game is the one who doesn’t let his mind go 
cruisin’ all over the chart.” 

I 

I can promise you that, anyway,” said Clem. 

Do it, an’ you’ll have no trouble. But you’ve 
got to show as well as to talk it! ” 

This time, the boy was right. He began with 
confidence, which counts for a good deal. There was 
perfect coordination between brain and muscle, for 
Clem’s difficulties, theretofore, had not been due to 
slow-wittedness, but to the fact that he was not 
naturally finger-wise.” In point of fact, great 
manual dexterity is not always a sign of intellectual 
power, rather the contrary. 

Clem made good here from the start. Magazine 
work soon became to him like child’s play, but, un¬ 
der constant warnings from his superior, he schooled 


FLASHING HEROISM 169 

himself to maintain that necessary mental stress 
which made every drill on board the Alaska as im¬ 
portant as if it were a veritable battle action. 

They put him in the handling-room, after a 
while. The work there was almost identical. Here 
he grabbed the bag of powder which shot through 
the plate in the steel door and took two short steps 
to place it on an endless chain of bronze ratchets 
which ran upwards at good speed through a tube to 
the gun chamber above. He caught the hang of 
this at once, all the more readily because his mus¬ 
cles were habituated to the exact weight of the bag 
of powder. 

Then the turret captain put him in the shell-room, 
to hook the huge projectiles on a traveler which 
should carry them to the gun. The handling of 
these three-quarter ton weights, round and slippery, 
was a task needing care. In this work, Clem’s lack 
of finger-deftness hindered him, but he managed to 
get through this course of his training without ac¬ 
tually making a delay, though he came near fum¬ 
bling, twice. He was glad to be able to give up han¬ 
dling shells, however, and rejoiced at being detailed 
to the post of powderman to a gun. 

This was merely another variation of the work in 
the powder magazine and the handling-room. It 


170 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

was his duty to grab the powder bags as they came 
up the chute from below and to place them on the 
steel loading-table in the exact position necessary 
for them to be thrust mechanically into the breech 
of the gun. 

The gun-chamber, extending the whole width of 
the turret^—twenty-eight feet across—suggested spa¬ 
ciousness as compared with the small space below, 
but it was crowded. In addition to eighteen men, 
stripped to the waist, and all on edge with nervous 
tension, there was a bewildering array of motors, 
chains, levers, ratcheted wheels, and what not. In 
that space were all the controls for turning the tur¬ 
rets, elevating the guns, all the recoil mechanism— 
for a 14-inch gun has a kick!—all the counter-recoil 
thrust machinery, all the hoists and travelers for 
shells and ammunition, and a score of other things 
which Clem did not understand at first sight. 

The breech of one of the guns was open, and, as 
he came up the ladder from below, Clem saw the 
rifled bore of the huge gun and the round spot of 
sky at its muzzle. But the size of the breech 
amazed him. It was well over four feet in diameter, 
and, though he had already learned, in his books, 
the name and purpose of all the various mechanisms 
which make up the breech-part of a big-calibre gun, 


FLASHING HEROISM 


171 

they seemed much more numerous and more com¬ 
plicated when he found himself directly in front of 
them, at drill. 

There was a sense of stiU greater tension in the 

loading drill ” here, than in the rooms below, and 
the men seemed an even more earnest lot. Lieu¬ 
tenant Lankester was standing by personally, too, 
and that made a difference. On orders from the of¬ 
ficer, Clem squeezed himself through the aperture 
in the steel bulkhead separatmg the gun chambers 
—a turret is no place for a fat man—and prepared 
to handle the bags, after a few short, sharp words 
from the gun captain. 

All stood ready. 

Load! ” 

The rattle and clang that broke out at the word 
was deafening, bewildering, more stunning even 
than in the handling room. With mechanical pre¬ 
cision, the breech-plug—^which had been closed be¬ 
fore the beginning of the drill—^rotated open just 
as the shell slid, gleaming, along its hoist. 

Clem would have given his ears for a chance to 
look round to see what was going on. He knew bet¬ 
ter. A powder-bag whirled up from below. 

That was his. 

He swung down to it. 


172 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

With a corner of his eye he saw the huge 14-inch 
shell lower to the loading table, slide, and slip into 
the breech assisted by a swift punch from a long 
piston-like rammer, and clang into its place against 
the riflings. 

Clem and his mate, each on one side of the gun, 
with a twin movement rolled their bags into their 
place on the loading-table; they were promptly 
whipped into the breech, and, as they settled, the 
huge breech-plug, massive enough to resist the whole 
back-pressure of the explosive, whanged into its 
place by the force of compressed air. 

Ready, yelled the gun captain, and the 

ready lights flashed up. 

Ahead of the other crew by a shade,^’ Lieutenant 

Lankester reported. “ They want to beat you, next 

> 

tune. You were over fifteen seconds and a quarter. 
Try it again.^’ 

Clem felt a good two inches taller. Here was real 
gun-crew work! He was only a powderman, but it 
was his’’ gun, and they had been ahead! It was 
a job that required speed and snap, and yet it had 
not bothered him in the least. He realized that his 
familiarity with the exact weight of the powder-bags 
was the cause, and he began to understand why daily 
drill produced perfection. 


FLASHING HEROISM 


173 

Thereafter turret drills had no further fears for 
him, and his consciousness of fitness in this one de¬ 
tail set him more at his ease for all other drills on 
board ship. He was no longer a Boots,’’ he felt 
himself to be really a Seaman, Second Class, with a 
chance of Seaman, First Class, not very far away. 

Later, much later, Clem succeeded in getting a 
detail to the fire-control gang, which works in 
what is unquestionably the most complicated gun¬ 
nery centre of the whole ship. Here the boy was 
entirely and completely happy. The very complex¬ 
ity of the work there, which drove a good many men 
wild, was a sheer delight to the boy, and he pre¬ 
ferred the concentrated hush of that all-important 
point to the clanging reverberation of the turret. 

He had gone through his turret work well enough, 
no better and no worse than the other men, but in 
the fire-control room his keener brain showed to 
its best advantage. Men came and went, but he 
stayed on, gaining the confidence of his superiors 
more and more. As Lieutenant Lankester had fore¬ 
seen, the boy had found his niche. 

In addition to the fire-control officer, a lieu- 
tenant-commander, there were five younger officers 
in the room, and Clem found them every bit as 
cordial as the petty officers and as ready to help him 


174 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

to learn. It frightened him a bit, though, to think 
that in Annapolis he would have to learn as much 
as they! The young fellow was appreciated in 
the fire-control room, for he knew how to think, 
how to concentrate, and, best of all, how to syn- 
thetize his knowledge. 

One by one, he came to learn all the hundred and 
forty-two dials and indicators which made the fire- 
control room a seeming confusion, at first sight, 
and a marvel of coordinated exactness, afterward. 
There is, perhaps, nothing on earth so marvellously 
arranged in so small a space as the fire-control room 
of a modern first-class battleship. 

Clem grasped all the intricacies, and came to learn 
how they communicated with every corner of the 
ship that had anything to do with guns, from the 

4 

little machine-guns in the fighting tops to the great 
14-inch monsters of the turrets. The captain on 
the bridge, far above, and the men in the powder 
magazines in the bowels of the barbettes were 
equally in direct relation with the fire-control of¬ 
ficer. The sea-planes wheeling overhead reported 
to him, and so did every gun station, fore or aft, 
port or starboard. And Clem learned, quietly, stead¬ 
ily, getting more and more a grip on himself, coming 
more and more to feel himself one with the guns. 



International Neivsreel Photo. 

Electrical Control Room. 

The levers which Ensign Parr is operating on the U. S. S. 
Colorado control the whole ship. 











Operating Platform. 

Engine-Room No. 2 of the U. S. S. MempJiis. (Light Cruiser.) 



FLASHING HEROISM 


175 

He smiled, now, at the days when he used to think 
that seamanship was everything. There was noth¬ 
ing too good for the guns! 

Clem had taken every opportunity of schooling 
that was to be got aboard—and battleship schools 
have a curriculum that many a high-class educa¬ 
tional institution would envy. Few were the days 
that he did not manage to get in at least two hours’ 
class work. Already he was regarded by his in¬ 
structors as the most promising student for the An¬ 
napolis examinations on board the ship. 

The tests were a long way ahead, for Clem was 
very young and he did not intend to try, prema¬ 
turely; but competition is the life of the Navy, and 
every ship likes to lead in successful applicants for 
the Naval Academy, just as every Black Gang likes 
to have the big “ E ” painted on its funnel, as every 
gun division fights frantically for a record, and as 
every boat’s crew strives to win the prize for the 
fleet. 

, With satisfactory reports from his divisional of¬ 
ficer, his instructor, and the fire-control officer, Clem 
was considered a likely lad. No more than that. 
The Navy is not surprised when it finds good men; 
it only gets surprised when it cannot whip a poor 
one into shape. 


176 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

In the course of his various drills, naturally, Clem 
had to take his turn at the five-inch anti-torpedo 
guns. That worried him a good deal more than tur¬ 
ret drill. There were fewer men for the work, and 
so the tasks were less divided. Then, too, there was 
less tension than in the turret, and lack of tension 
is apt to cause the attention to stray. 

One morning, after General Quarters ’’ was over, 
a special drill was called. Clem stepped smartly 
into his place beside the gun. He was no longer 
nervous about any of his work. He was not the 
best man of the gun crew, he knew that, he never 
would be, but, at least he could handle himself suf¬ 
ficiently well not to merit any rebuke. 

It was a fine-enough morning, with a moderate 
sea, nothing to distinguish it from any other morn¬ 
ing, just as there was nothing to distinguish this 
drill from any other drill. The cartridge, in the 
usual fashion, came travelling up the electric hoist. 

Suddenly, quite suddenly, for no known reason, a 
presentiment of something—^what, he did not know 
—tingled through Clem as if he had received a slight 
electric shock. The cartridge—it was a salute charge 
—slid into place, the breech snapped to, and the 
gun was fired. 

Instantly, for some reason unknown, the charge 



FLASHING HEROISM 


177 

exploded, wrecking the gun, killing one of the crew 
and blowing Clem a dozen feet along the deck, bang 
against a casemate. 

The boy knew that he was hurt, felt that he was 
going to fall unconscious, but, with a prescient flash, 
one of those amazing bursts of subconscious thought 
—some call it subliminal energy—took possession 
of him. A Self which was himself, and which yet 
was not himself, snatched him in its grip. 

He must not lose consciousness; he must not! 

He was physically stunned, momentarily, stunned 
for immediate action, but this inner l)ower which 
had gripped him, or this instantaneous conscious¬ 
ness of danger dominated over the physical nerve 
shock. The phenomenon is well known. The per¬ 
ceptive will, raised to its highest power, is superior 
to bodily feeling. 

If Clem was stunned for as much as a second or 
two, that was all. He knew that it was not more. 
He had proof of it. When the charge exploded, he 
had seen a sailor begin to run to the crew’s assist¬ 
ance. When he came to consciousness, again, the 
man had not run a dozen yards. 

And yet—and yet the boy was somehow aware 
that a furious battle of wills, deep within, one of 
those inexplicable feats of the subconscious which 


178 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

lies outside the limits of time, had taken place in 
him and had been won. Just as a man, falling from 
a height, in a single second of time seems leisurely 
to review all the events of his past life, so did Clem’s 
mind operate. 

There was some purpose in it all. Dimly, he felt 
it. 

Some inner force was keeping him alert. 

For what? 

His head swimming, his body swaying, his eyes 
dazed, but with an imperious Something dominating 
his brain, Clem looked round. 

He saw, with a clarity of vision that was nothing 
else than a revelation, some pieces of burning waste 
that had been ignited by the explosion and hurled 
some distance from the gun. 

There! There was the danger! 

The burning waste had fallen near a casemate 
containing a large supply of explosive. Some grains 
of the powder might have crept through cracks in 
the steel plate joinings, for fine dust, in some mys¬ 
terious way, will pass where water does not. 

The thought did not come to the boy to call for 
help. He thought—if that instantaneous perception 
can really be called thought ”—that the work was 
his to do. 


FLASHING HEROISM 


179 


He was the nearest man. 

The most of the burning waste was not two yards 
away; some of it was within reach. 

The burning waste! 

The powder! 

That startling lucidity which belongs to those 
rare minutes when the unconscious and the con¬ 
scious mind come together, even for a fraction of an 
instant, brought the boy to his feet. Certainly it 
was not that slow process which is called reason,^’ 
it was not his conscious will, at least. 

He knew that he was on his feet. He did not 
know how he had got there. 

The burning waste! 

The powder! 

That mattered, and that only! 

Stooping with that ecstatic recklessness of bodily 
pain which distinguishes this state of exaltation, 
Clem snatched up with his bare hands an armful of 
that oily waste, flaming, fizzing and spluttering. 
Staggering—for, physically speaking he was too 
badly injured to stand—he lurched with it to the 
side of the ship and threw it overboard.'^ 

^ This incident occurred on board the U. S. S. Pittsburgh, 
while at sea. The heroic seaman was Ora Graves, and he was 
accorded a Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery. Only 
a slight change in the recounting of the incident has been made. 

F. R-W. 


i8o WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

Bits of the burning waste stuck fuzzily to his 
hands and arms; the flames had already licked his 
eyebrows off. 

Did he know? 

He knew, and yet he did not. 

The burning waste! 

The powder! 

He knew, but he, the Clem Derry of that moment, 
was something different from the Clem Derry of 
every day. It was not that he did not think. On 
the contrary, he thought with the speed of the elec¬ 
tric flash. So fast was his brain whirling that the 
contrast between it and his actual movements made 
them seem interminably slow. Judged by ordinary 
standards, they were lightning fast. 

He stooped for another armful of waste, receiving 
burns upon the previous burns. He felt them, as 
he might have felt some agonizing pain happening 
to him in a dream, as though it were he, and yet not 
he, which was suffering the pain. 

One thing dominated all: 

The burning waste! 

The powder! 

A third armful followed. The unimaginable ex¬ 
altation was beginning to pass. He was cruelly con¬ 
scious of his burns. 


FLASHING HEROISM i8i 

But his efforts had been seen and two men came 
running in his direction. 

In Clem’s abnormally stimulated thinking, he 
wondered how men could move so slowly. Their 
movements were like those of figures taken with the 
ultra-rapid motion-picture camera. It seemed to 
him that he was moving in the same way. No 
bodily action could concord with the timeless speed 
of his whirling brain. 

There was not enough waste to make a further 
armful, but there were small pieces, flaming and 
spluttering viciously, some of them almost against 
the casemate. He swept them together with his 
hands, with what seemed to him to be an infinite 
lassitude of movement, pulled the little pile clear, 
clutched the burning stuff in his hands, straightened 
up and lurched to the rail stanchions. 

As the last pieces of burning waste hissed into the 
sea, the boy turned and smiled. 

Then he fell. 

The two men who were running toward him at 
top speed did not reach in time to catch him. 

That time when he had been sweeping up the last 
pieces of the burning waste, and which seemed to 
him to have dragged endlessly, had been but a fren¬ 
zied second. 


iSz 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


Yet, even in that instant of falling, a fierce tingle 
of triumph repaid him for all. Before the conscious 
brain resumed its normal sway and the blackness of 
unconsciousness swept over him, he knew; he knew! 

He knew that he had saved the ship 1 



Courtesy of U. S. Navy. 


A Battleship Foremast. 

Looking upward from deck of the U.S.S. Pennsylvania, between 
two fourteen-inch guns. Signal hoist up, and man signalling. 






i 



Courtesy of U. S. Navy. 


Launching a Battleship. 

The U. S. S. Mai'yland about to take the water at Newport 

News, Virginia. 





CHAPTER XIII 


FIGHTERS, OLD AND NEW 

For the next forty-eight hours, Clem was uncon¬ 
scious of what was going on. He lay in a state of 
semi-coma, as much from the mental strain which 
he had undergone as from his actual injuries. He 
sensed vaguely—^but could not be sure whether it 
was a dream or the reality—that the executive officer 
and the captain, himself, had come down to the 
sick-bay to see him. 

A piece of the shattered gun had hit him in the 
chest and had smashed in a rib, and the surgeon was 
afraid that the broken bone might have pierced the 
lungs; luckily, it had not. But the boy was nastily 
burned, and, while the burns were mainly super¬ 
ficial, they did not heal as quickly as they should. 
Frankly, Clem cared little for that. He had been 
told that the captain had already sent a report to 
the Secretary of the Navy, recommending him for a 
Navy Cross for having distinguished himself by 
extraordinary heroism in the line of his profession.’’ 

Clem was recovering, but still in sick-bay when 
the Alaska dropped anchor in Guantanamo Bay, 

183 


184 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

Cuba, the winter pleasure resort of the Navy/’ so 
called, apparently, because there is as much to be 
done ashore, there, as afloat. It is there, and at sim¬ 
ilar naval bases, that Landing-Force Drills ” and 
other such manoeuvres are whipped to a precision. 
The Navy Marksmen Course is there brought to a 
fine point, and, to those who are bom marksmen, the 
Sharpshooter’s Course is open. It takes a very un¬ 
usual man to pass that. 

Guantanamo is a winter resort, truly, with an 
ideal climate, and landsmen who do not understand 
the complexity of naval training are apt to comment 
unfavorably on the supposed expense of sending the 
Scouting Fleet to Cuba, every year, just after New 
Year’s Day. The real truth is that the three hard¬ 
est winter months, in the north, give much less op¬ 
portunity for work and training, but they enhance 
such opportunities in the south. Guantanamo has 
added three stiff working months to the Navy’s year. 

None the less, Guantanamo is dear to the hearts 
of all enlisted men, for it is one of the greatest sport¬ 
ing grounds in the world, and Navy men are sports¬ 
men first, last, and all the time. They are not 
‘^spectator sportsmen,” either, like the men who 
sit on the bleachers and hurl abuse and pop-bottles 
at the umpire, though they themselves could hardly 


FIGHTERS, OLD AND NEW 185 

hit anything smaller than a barn with a baseball at 
ten yards. They are sportsmen, who are in the game 
and on the game, all the time. A good proportion 
of all leisure-time talk, among enlisted men, is sports 
talk; a good share of the spaee in the weekly papers 
published on most of the battleships, is sporting col¬ 
umn material, and the officers encourage it. 

Guantanamo has seventeen first-class baseball 
diamonds, a first-class gridiron, athletic grounds, 
tennis courts for the officers, and all the rest of it, 
in addition to the numerous small-arm ranges. 
There is any amount of land behind it for landing- 
force drill of the most exciting character, extend¬ 
ing, even, to a week or two under canvas, under the 
same conditions as any military field troops, field 
artillery and all. Sailors are not army men and do 
not pretend to be, they do not even try to compete 
with the Marines on their own ground, but a naval 
regiment is a highly efficient organization, and this 
has been largely due to the training which is possible 
during the winter months at the southern bases. 

Such drills, it is true, although the men regard 
them as “ fun ” because of the entire change from 
sea life, partake of the nature of work. Yet they 
have a sporting character, just the same. Baseball 
and football, too, take on a little of the spirit of 


186 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

Navy discipline, but they remain in the domain of 
sports and there is always the element of choice. 
Men are strongly persuaded to enter some one or 
other of the teams, but such action is voluntary, and 
they are never forced to do so. 

With a good deal of reason, Navy men reckon 
themselves as the finest body of sportsmen in the 
world. The thousand men aboard any battleship are 
willing to challenge any other thousand men in any 
organization, anywhere, to swing a bat, kick the pig¬ 
skin, drop into the basket, slip over a Kid McCoy 
punch, do the Australian crawl, or pull an oar. It is 
a good challenge, but there will never be any one 
found to take it up. The U. S. Navy is the greatest 
sporting organization in the two hemispheres. 

It would be a great mistake to suppose that the 
Navy is all work and no play—or all play and no 
work! Educators found out, long ago, that one of 
the best ways to make men work together is to have 
them play together; it is a great deal easier to stir 
a crew into the vim of competition drills with the 
other ships of the fieet, if they have already stirred 
themselves up into the enthusiasm of competitive 
athletics. 

Said a sailor on the Wee Vee {West Virginia ): 

^‘What! Let Missy {Mississippi) get it over us 


FIGHTERS, OLD AND NEW 187 

on target practice? Not much! Look how we 
smeared it over her at the boat races! ” 

Which is just the point. 

It might be going a bit too far to say that a ship's 
crew is prouder of the baseball pennant of the fleet 
than of the red flag with a black ball, flying at the 
truck, which declares that a ship is the best gunnery 
ship of the fleet, or a big E " painted on the funnel, 
which declared that the engmeering crowd or the 
Black Gang have the best record of the fleet, but, 
certainly, there will be more talk 'tween decks about 
the baseball than about the gunnery or the engineer¬ 
ing. That is natural. 

Boxing is, perhaps, the one best sporting bet of 
the Navy, and a man who can handle the gloves 
prettily is taking a sure road to the esteem of his 
shipmates. Aboard ship everything is done to stim¬ 
ulate the interest in boxing. There are few things 
which give so good a training for muscle, quickness, 
and good temper. Moreover, it is to be remembered 
that, in spite of its peace activities, the Navy is 
primarily a fighting organization; a man who is able 
to take care of himself, when the time comes, is a 
man in the right place. 

Some of the best boxers who ever stepped into the 
ring have been Navy-made " men, such as Sharkey, 



i88 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

Gunther, Frank Moran, Gunboat Smith, Battling 
Ski, Honey Boy Fmnegan, and Gene Tunney of the 
Marines. There is all the difference in the world 
between pugilism as a business and boxing as a 
sport, and both the officers and the men themselves 
see that it is kept at a high standard. 

Every big ship, too, has its wrestlers, experts in 
the various holds: Greco-Roman, Cumberland, 
Catch-as-Catch-Can, or Japanese, and they have the 
wrestling tricks down fine. A bout between the two 
best men of a ship will bring to the ringside every 
man who is not on watch, and if there is any ques¬ 
tion of an inter-ship contest, the excitement runs 
high. 

Naval baseball is snappy, and extends all through 
the ship, with teams for each division and gun crew. 
The Black Gang shows up well sometimes, and the 
machinists and firemen sometimes make their deck 
shipmates hustle. The picked nine of any of the 
larger ships—and some of the smaller ones—can give 
a good accounting of itself against the very best non¬ 
professional teams of the country—and some of the 
professional ones, too. The man who says that he 
would rather watch two battleship nines fight it out 
for the championship of the fleet than see a World^s 
Series is not exaggerating; he is merely showing that 


FIGHTERS, OLD AND NEW 189 

he understands baseball and has a taste for excite¬ 
ment. 

Football is taken with a tremendous vim when¬ 
ever and wherever the big ships are m port and 
there is any time to spare, and every chance is given 
to the enlisted men to form a good team. Not only 
the athletic instructor but also a good many of the 
oflGicers are ready to help, and the best football coach 
in the Navy to-day is a chaplain. 

Every Navy man, without any exception, is 
taught how to swim, and at Guantanamo and similar 
bases, swimming races are all the go. Traditionally, 
of course all sailors are supposed to swim and all the 
Black Gang to drown, but it does not always work 
out that way. To a seaman’s notion, an artificer 
cannot tell the difference between a signal-halliard 
and a towing-cable; the engineer retorts that if a 
seaman were told to get a monkey-wrench he would 
probably grab the business end of an oil-nozzle. 
Yet, on more than one occasion, the Black Gang, in 
the water, has shown that it has an engine-power of 
its own, and several swimming records have gone to 
the artificer branch. 

Seven Congressional Medals of Honor have been 
given to ships’ cooks—perhaps the detail which used 
to be considered the least important on board ship. 


190 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

Son of a Sea-cook'' was a common word of con¬ 
tempt. But there are cases—such as Jesse W. Cov¬ 
ington, of the U. S. S. Stewart who, following an in¬ 
ternal explosion on board the Florence H, plunged 
into the sea to rescue a survivor, although the 
drowning man was surrounded by boxes of powder 
which were continually exploding. No more gallant 
rescue has ever been made, yet one does not, as a 
rule, look to the cook’s galley for a breeding-ground 
of heroes. 

The boat races, such as are held in Guantanamo 
Bay, every year, to the men of the Navy are as big 
an event as the Henley Regatta, or even bigger. 
The men take them as sporting events in every 
meaning of the word, and the officers regard them as 
an important part of the training, for boat work is 
essential to the Navy. 

But all the fun on board ship is not devoted to 
sports, exclusively. “ Movies ” play an important 
part in the recreation hours of the bluejackets, and 
every battleship and several of the cruisers are fitted 
up for them. The Navy Film Service buys and dis¬ 
tributes the films, and a poor picture never gets on 
a Navy screen. 

The high-speed motion-picture camera, which, 
when thrown on a screen at the regular projection 



Courtesy of U. S. Navy. 

“Swimming Call.” 

On the U. S. S. Californui at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. 












FIGHTERS, OLD AND NEW 191 

speed, produces such extraordinary pictures of dis¬ 
sociated movements, is a naval invention, though 
the fact is not generally known. It was an answer 
to the question: 

« 

“ How fast does a shell go, and what are its mo¬ 
tions while it is going? 

It was in 1913 that the Bureau of Ordnance took 
up this question, and the Naval Gun Factory, in 
collaboration with the Edison Laboratories, designed 
and built the first three high-speed cameras in the 
world. The very first one had the capacity of start¬ 
ing and stopping 6,600 times per minute and taking 
that number of pictures. That speed has now been 
raised, so that a 14-inch shell, going screaming from 
a full-charged gun, can be photographed going 
through the air as easily as if it were a child^s toy- 
balloon, floating in a summer zephyr. 

Entertainment is also a feature of the recreational 
life of a ship, and a good singer, a good banjo-picker, 
a monologist, or a clog-dancer, can awaken a good 
deal of enthusiasm at the “ smokers ” frequently 
given on board ship. A sleight-of-hand magician or 
a real wizard of the Houdini kind is apt to have a 
wider reputation among his fellows than has the Ad¬ 
miral of the fleet. 

A good band is a part of the make-up of every 


192 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

battleship, and the Navy has turned out a large 
number of musicians. Three composers of some 
note got their first training under Navy band- 
masters. In short, everything is done to make life 
for the bluejacket as pleasant as possible, conform¬ 
able with unremitting discipline and a steady run 
of hard work. 

Such recruiting phrases as: See the World and 
get paid for it! do not at all express the true spirit 
of the Navy. That spirit is really twofold—to make 
a splendid Navy which shall be worthy of the honor 
and reputation of the United States, for one thing; 
and, for another, to send those who do not reenlist 
back into civil life better-trained and better-edu¬ 
cated citizens than they could have been made in 
four years in any educational institution or calling 
that can be named. 

One of the great results of the new system of 
training which pertains to the new Navy is the strik¬ 
ing improvement in the type of men who man the 
decks and the engine-rooms of U. S. battleships, 
cruisers, and destroyers, to say nothing of the more 
sensational duties of the submarine and aviation de¬ 
tails. Without desiring to boast, it is the especial 
pride of the Navy to know that naval men ashore in 
foreign ports are keen, clean, and smart; well-be- 


FIGHTERS, OLD AND NEW 193 

haved and intelligent, just the kind of men best 
fitted to give people of other lands the idea of what 
is a true American. Drunken Jack ashore is a 
legend of the past, so far as American man-o’-waFs- 
men are concerned. 

It was not so in the old times. The “ man before 
the mast or the enlisted man of the frigate days— 
glorious fighter though he showed himself to be— 
was rough and tough. Ships were manned not only 
by the adventurous and the reckless, by daredevils 
and runaways, but also by the sweepings of the 
port towns, by escaping criminals and ex-convicts. 

The cruises often lasted several months at a time, 
the officers were necessarily harsh and the petty of¬ 
ficers brutal, the pay was almost nil, the food was 
atrocious and produced more disease than battle 
actions did wounds, shore liberty was inadequate, 
and a sailor who did not get fighting drunk in every 
port was regarded as a striking exception. 

Flogging—while not as general as in the British 
Navy—continued to exist, and there was a custom 
of giving the last man down out of the rigging a cut 
with the cat-o’-nine-tails. That kind of discipline 
assured speed, just as new Navy discipline does, but 
it was the result of fear and not of a voluntary and 
eager emulation. 



194 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

I ^ 

Inferior to all were the landsmen or “ landlub¬ 
bers/’ who had not been at sea long enough to be 
termed sailors. They acted as swabbers, scavengers, 
pumpers, sewermen, pig-sty keepers, and so on. 
Able seamen did only nautical work, both on deck 
and aloft, and they were the real sailormen. The 

landlubbers ” did not climb the rigging, as is evi¬ 
denced by the words of the old song: 

‘‘While we jolly sailor boys are laying out aloft, 
And the landlubbers lying down below. 

All hands were called at four bells (6 o’clock), 
that is, all save the able seamen on watch. The 
watches were the old alternate four-hour watches, 
with the two “ dog-watches ” 4^6 and 6-8 in the 
evening, done to alternate the order of the watches, 
and when all hands were on deck. Since there were 
neither schools nor recreation hours, gambling filled 
up the rare intervals when work was not going on. 

There was always a lot of work to be done, for 
the old-time sailing frigate—even with auxiliary 
steam—^needed constant attention, but there was 
nothing like the same amount of drill. A sailor was 
not supposed to have a smart appearance. There 
was no need for gunnery practice, for the guns were 
very simple mechanisms and all firing was at short 



FIGHTERS, OLD AND NEW 195 

range. When the test of actual fighting came, reck¬ 
less courage and contempt for danger were the es¬ 
sential considerations, not discipline and precision, 
as is the case, to-day. There was always plenty of 
rough work to be done at sea; in port, the ships 
stayed only long enough to take on provisions, can¬ 
vas, and cordage; and ship-chandler^s supplies. 

Meals of the old Navy would raise a riot among 
American bluejackets to-day. The average daily ra¬ 
tion then consisted of one pound of hard-tack, a gal¬ 
lon of beer, a noggin of rum, one pound of beef or 
pork (weighed as it came out, soaked, from the 
brine-barrel), one pound of oatmeal or peas, one 
ounce of sugar, one ounce of cheese and one ounce 
of butter. Sometimes there was half a pound of 
Soft Tommy (fresh bread) on Sundays, and 
slush plumduff’’ (a boiled flour pudding made 
with refuse fat and raisins) was added on special 
days, with an extra ration of grog. 

After the salt horse had been boiled for a while 
and the foul-smelling skimmings of fat sloshed into 
the slush-barrel—^half was used as perquisites for 
the cook and the other half for greasing the masts, 
etc.—it was boiled again in the hope of making it 
eatable. The beef was the tougher, the pork was the 
nastier. [Well do I remember it! F. R-W.] 


196 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

If allowed to get cold, it hardened and could be 
carved into knick-knacks, figureheads, pipe-bowls, 
and what not, the tough meat taking on a rich red 
polish with a curious green iridescence from arrested 
decay. 

The oatmeal, if made into a thin gruel, was known 
as burgoo if made thick and sometimes helped 
out with leavings and slush, it was called skilli- 
galee’^; if mixed with dried stock-fish—^which had 
to be beaten soft on the anchor with a maul—it was 
known as herring-guts.’^ Thick pea-soup, unsalted 
but mixed with slush and hard-tack soaked in sea¬ 
water and baked, was “ dog’s body.” Regarding 
such items as cheese and butter, a kindly silence is 
wisest. 

Rank navy tobacco helped to overcome the taste 
and nausea of the food, but it needed nearly as 
strong a stomach to chew the tobacco as to digest 
the food. The long sausage-shaped plugs—never 
mind the sea-name—were made on board. The 
leaves of tobacco were moistened with rum, lightly 
smeared with molasses and lain on top of each other. 
They were then rolled in a strip of canvas, tarred 
within and without, and “ served ” or tightly wound 
with sennet or plaited rope yarn. It took a good 
knife to cut that plug, and better teeth to bite the 



FIGHTERS, OLD AND NEW 197 

quid. Oakum was sometimes used for chewing when 
the tobacco gave out 

Perhaps it is wiser not to speak of the scenes on 
board during battle. They were of the very essence 
of heroism, but the description would shock even 
the least sensitive people, to-day. Very serious 
wounds were not treated at all; the wounded men 
were hove overboard. They were probably better 
off, so, than trying to recover amid the infection and 
the neglect, on board. Antisepsis, or the clean treat¬ 
ment of wounds, was unknown, so was chloroform. 

Wooden ships and iron men is a good descrip¬ 
tion of the vessels and the sailors of those times, and 
a true one. But no more unjust phrase has ever 
been coined than iron ships and wooden men,” 
which is the taunt of the old-timers. It may not 
seem, at first, that there is the same need for per¬ 
sonal fighting courage, nowadays, as in the times 
gone by, but the grit is there, still, just the same. 
Ask for volunteers for danger, to-day, as of old, and 
every man will jump to the front. 

Ask the Germans what they thought of the fight¬ 
ing of the Marines at Belleau Wood, ask the Chinese 
what they thought of the sailors charging up the 
barricaded streets of Tien-tsin, ask the Mexicans 
what they thought of the shock-troop business of 


198 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

the landing-forces at Vera Cruz, ask the world at 
large what it thinks of the American crews of the 
U. S. Navy destroyers, mine-layers, and mine¬ 
sweepers during the World War, and the answer will 
thunder out clear. 

The men of the American Navy, to-day, are no 
better, as men, than the heroes of the “ old fighting 
times,” but they are every bit as good. Americans 
all! 



Naval Training Station, San Diego, California. 

























CHAPTER XIV 


DESTROYER MEN 

The first direct gain which came to Clem from 
his feat in throwing overboard the burning waste 
was his notification that there was a vacancy in the 
detail to the Seaman Gunner’s School at Washing¬ 
ton, if he cared to take it. He asked one of the 
gunner’s mates, and was promptly told that he 
would be a dumb ape ” if he refused. 

After he was at the school, however, Clem regret¬ 
ted the ship every minute of the day. The book- 
work, as usual, he did not mind, but the industrial 
end of gun-making frankly bored him. Yet he was 
quite able to see its value in learning gunnery. It 
taught him the extraordinary precision with which 
every part of a gun is made. The machinist side of 
the Navy had never appealed much to the boy, he 
knew well that he was not well adapted for it, but 
the few weeks in the Seaman Gunner’s School gave 
him a background, the value of which he did not 
recognize until long afterward. 

The Proving Ground for the big guns, at Indian 
Head, interested him more, for he had the good luck 

199 


200 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


to be there when a new 16 -inch gun was being 
proved. So far, Clem’s experiences had been with 
the 14 -inch guns, exclusively, and before the firing 
of the gun, the warrant officer in charge of the stu¬ 
dent seamen, took them all over the gun. Aside 
from the much larger size of the breech, there was 
not a great deal of difference from the 14 -inch gun 
to which he had become well accustomed in his tur¬ 
ret drill. Some of the other men, who had spent all 
their time on the cruisers, with 9 -inch guns—in 
which the general mechanism differs a good deal— 
were rather at sea about it, and the warrant olQficer, 
desiring to find out how much Clem knew, made him 
describe the gun to his classmates. Clem came out 
of the ordeal, shining. His book-work was begin¬ 
ning to tell. 

Chemistry had always been rather a hobby with 
the boy, and he had read every book that he could 
lay hands on which dealt with powder and explo¬ 
sives. The officers of the fire-control room had 
told him more. As a consequence, after he had fin¬ 
ished the course in the Seaman Gunner’s School, he 
was given a short detail at the powder factory, and 
also at the second proving ground at Machodoc 
Creek, Va., and, at his own request, he went to the 
projectile plant and the armor plant at South 


DESTROYER MEN 


201 


Charleston, W. Va. While the Navy is thoroughly 
disciplined and works according to routine, it is, at 
the same time, elastic and pliable, and one of its 
outstanding features is the interest that officers take 
in a young fellow who is eager to learn. 

The next suggestion was that he should go to the 
Torpedo School, but one of the officers, finding that 
Clem had been six months away from sea, advised 
him to go back on board, first, and to leave the Tor¬ 
pedo School until afterward. 

Of course, Derry,said the officer, in the ordi¬ 
nary way you would go back to the Alaska, and from 
the way IVe heard you talking about her, you won^t 
be sorry to see the old ship again, eh? 

No, sir; it’ll seem good to be back.” 

That’s right. But I’ve another chance for you. 
Do you remember the Cunningham f’’ 

The destroyer which rescued me from Nine 
Quays Island? Yes, sir.” 

'^Well, they need a gunner’s mate, third class, 
and as I see that there’s no reason why you should 
not make the rating, I believe that can be arranged. 
The examinations for the ratings are to take place 
on the Alaska next month. Nothing is sure, of 
course, but if you think you would like to go on the 
Cunningham the commander told me that he would 


202 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

be glad to have you. He told me about your stay 
on the island, and I told him about your being 
named for the Navy Cross. He takes the credit for 
the Cunningham having been the means of bringing 
you into the Navy.^’ 

‘‘ He’s right, sir. And a good thing for me, sir.” 

I see what you’re thinking! Annapolis, eh? 
Well, stick to it, Derry. A hundred men make the 
grade every year. You’ve got another year before 
you before you need go up. I believe you’ll do it; 
I hope you will! ” 

The examination for gunner’s mate did not trou¬ 
ble Clem at all. He knew his work thoroughly, and 
his record was absolutely clean, with the addition of 
the recommendation for the Navy Cross. But the 
questions were stiffer than he expected, and the boy 
thanked his lucky stars for the time that he had 
spent at the Seamen’s Gunnery School. A few days 
after, he was informed that he had passed and was 
detailed to the U. S. Destroyer, Cunningham, 

How the destroyer reminded him of those first 
days when thin, weak, famine-bloated, he was 
helped on the destroyer’s decks by two of the crew 
and first set foot on a naval vessel! She had seemed 
amazing to him, then; after his year on the great 
battleship, she seemed almost nothing, now. Why, 


DESTROYER MEN 


203 

one of the boats of the Alaska could have put the 
whole crew of the Cunningham aboard, and had 
room to spare. 

Destroyers are named after officers and men who 
have shown some distinctive service to the Navy— 
the names of destroyer vessels is a roster of heroes. 
Battleships are always named for States, and 
cruisers for cities. Aircraft carriers may be named 
after aviation pioneers, oil-tankers have the names 
of rivers, colliers have mythological names painted 
on their bows and under the quarter, cargo ships re¬ 
joice in the names of stars, mine-sweepers are named 
after birds, submarines are designated by letters and 
numerals, the letter indicating a type and the num¬ 
ber the sequence of a vessel of that type. Patrol 
vessels—the Eagles and the Submarine Chasers— 
are known by numbers only. In that way, the name 
of a vessel shows immediately the class to which 
she belongs. 

A destroyer is made for speed, and she is made 
for action. She is about eleven times and a half as 
long as she is wide, and in a heavy sea it’s about as 
easy to stay on her decks as for a fly to keep a com¬ 
fortable seat on a football during a Yale-Harvard 
game. But, for all that, as every one says about a 
destroyer: 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


204 

You take a destroyer in a full gale, anything up 
to ninety miles an hour, put her stern to it, give her 
five or six knots headway, and there she’ll lie till 
the North Atlantic blows dry.” 

There is another thing about destroyers, too. 
Their plates are thin, not a very great deal thicker 
than stout cardboard, and therefore they suggest 
frailty. But a destroyer has a most amazing talent 
for staying afloat. They had a saying during the 
war: 

“You never see a dead donkey or a sunken de¬ 
stroyer.” 

And, when it is remembered that the Navy had 
over two hundred destroyers convoying merchant 
vessels and therefore deliberately making them¬ 
selves the targets for U-boats—German submarines 
—the amazing part of it is that only one torpedo- 
boat destroyer, the Jacob Jones, was sunk during the 
entire course of the war. The torpedoing of that 
vessel and of the Cassm are of considerable im¬ 
portance as showing the spirit of the American 
sailors on board a Navy destroyer. 

The case of the Cassin is a very extraordinary 
one, demonstrating the fact that torpedoes are not 
perfect, and that some of them—for an unknown 
reason—“ go crazy.” The Cassin was struck by a 


DESTROYER MEN 205 

'' crazy torpedo/' This is what happened, as it was 
told to Clem by one of the survivors: 

The Cassin was patroilin' that time off the south 
coast of Ireland, when about three bells of the noon 
watch, a U-boat was spotted from the lookout 
aloft. We made for her, you can just bet, hopin' to 
get our ram into her, but before we got to her, she 
submerged. Wow! We knew what that meant. 
We had been after her, now she was after us. One 
pair of eyes per man wasn't enough, we wanted a 
dozen apiece. 

“ Just about half an hour later, the commander 
sighted a torpedo, runnin' strong, cornin' at 35 knots 
and headed to strike us amidships. Pretty neat, that 
was; the U-boat must have popped up for a second 
and got our range, probably porpoisin'. None of us 
had spotted her periscope. 

Naturally the engine room was stretchin' itself 
to the limit, the commander havin' rung up double 
emergency full speed on the engine telegraph, and 
the torpedo, when sighted, was about 400 yards 
away. At the rate she was going, she’d hit us in 
thirty seconds. You see, Clem, where it pays to act 
lively! Talk about a pirouette! There isn't any 
ballerine that can spin around as the Cassin did, an' 
we had a broad grin, all of us, as we saw that we'd 


2o6 with the U. S. navy 

fooled 'em, and the torpedo had passed under the 
stern. 

Then—this is straight goods, Derry, an’ you can 
read it in the official report—that torpedo porpoised 
out o’ the sea., when about 20 feet away, took a look 
round, changin’ her course in the air, an’ hit the 
Cassin like she was a bird, not a fish, on the port side 
aft. Crazy? That torpedo was plumb crazy. I’ve 
seen ’em chasing their tails, like kittens, at torpedo 
practice and I’ve seen ’em jig about like a fire¬ 
cracker. But that’s the first one I ever saw come up 
like an educated flyin’-fish.” 

Only one life was lost,” reads the official report. 
“ Osmond K. Ingram, gunner’s mate, first class, was 
cleaning the muzzle of No. 4 gun, target practice be¬ 
ing just over when the attack occurred. With rare 
presence of mind, realizing that the torpedo was 
about to strike that part of the ship where the depth 
charges were stored and that the setting off of these 
explosives might sink the ship, Ingram, immediately 
seeing the danger, ran aft to strip these charges and 
to throw them overboard. He was blown to pieces 
when the torpedo struck. Thus Ingram sacrificed 
his life in performing a duty which he believed 
would save his ship and the lives of the officers and 
men on board.” 

'' Owin’ to our little ballet dance,” went on the 
petty officer, the engines could still be worked, but 


DESTROYER MEN 


2oy 

our rudder had gone to Davy Jones and the Cassin 
waltzed in a circle, just a nice easy little prey if 
that sub. wanted to finish the job. 

“ She did! An hour later, when our eyes were 
tired lookin’ for her, we saw her connin’-tower slip- 
pin’ through the water at about 1,500 yards. That 
was near enough for us. We cut loose with our 
4 -inch. Three missed, sure, the fourth may have hit. 
Anyhow, the U-boat submerged an’ never come up 
again. I suppose he thought we were so crippled 
that we’d sure sink, an’ he didn’t seem to hanker 
after those 4 -inch shells a little bit. 

Well, there didn’t seem much chance, for we 
were on a lee shore—an’ that’s a bad coast—with 
wind and water making. ‘ Sparks ’ managed to rig 
up a temporary radio set—our boys can make one 
out of nothing but a sardine can and a dead spark¬ 
plug—an’ he S 0 S’ed like a small boy askin’ ques¬ 
tions. 

Somewhere about nine o’clock, mean weather, 
rough sea an’ the wind risin’, with the cliffs of Ire¬ 
land waitin’ to welcome our bones, two British mine¬ 
sweepers, the Jessamine an’ the Tamarisk, came 
pokin’ up out of the dark. Our sardine-can radio 
had reached. Of course, the thing to do was to lay 
by until daylight, but we could hear, Derry, we could 



2o8 with the U. S. navy 

hear the breakers. That’s bad bearin’ when the rud¬ 
der’s blown away.” 

“ I know breakers! ” interrupted Clem. 

“ Ay, lad, so you do! Well, the Tamarisk lowered 
a boat—runnin’ big chances, too, in that seai—an’ 
the men who volunteered for that boat weren’t fair- 
weather sailors, I’m tollin’ you! She smashed 
against our side twice an’ how the boys aboard her 
kept from being stove in is a mystery. But they got 
a line aboard which we bent to our 8-inch grass 
hawser. An hour later the line parted.” 

Tough luck! ” 

“An’ then some! Well, they put out another 
boat, got the line aboard, took the hawser. Zip! 
She parted again. But the towin’ had done one 
thing, it had let the Cassin pass Hook Point, where' 
we’d have got the hook an’ gone off stage sure 
enough. In the morning, a British sloop-of-war, 
the Snowdrop, came along with a hawser that would 
have held all Ireland, an’ towed us into port.” 

Even in that, there was a humorous side, as Con¬ 
nolly tells the story: 

“ There was that about the code-books,” he wrote. 
“ The instructions to all ships are to get rid of the 
code-books if there is ever any likelihood of the 
enemy capturing the ship. They are kept in a steel 


DESTROYER MEN 209 

box and altogether they weigh—I do not know, I 
never lifted them—but some say they weigh 150, 
some 200 pounds. 

“ After the Cassin was torpedoed, an ensign 
grabbed up that code-book chest, tossed it onto his 
shoulder, and waltzed out of the wardroom passage 
and onto deck with it. You would think it was a 
feather pillow he was dancing off with. 

“ When the danger of capture was over, our young 
ensign hooked his fingers into the chest-handles to 
waltz back with it. But nothing doing. It took two 
of them to carry it back and they did not trip lightly 
down any passageway with it, either, proving once 
again that there are times when a man is stronger 
than at other times.^’ 

The sinking of the Jacob Jones was more tragic, 
and there were no humorous incidents in it. The 
story is worth telling in the words of the Command¬ 
ing Officer, Lieut. Commander Bagley. It holds its 
place among the heroic archives of the Navy. No 
better example of naval discipline and Navy men’s 
courage could be cited. 


“At 4:21 p. M., on Dec. 6, 1917, (near the coast 
of Cornwall) clear weather, smooth sea, speed 13 
knots, zigzagging, the U. S. S. Jacob Jones was 
struck on the starboard side by a torpedo from an 
enemy submarine. The ship was one of six of an 
escorting group which were returning independently 
from off Brest to Queenstown. All other ships of 
the group were out of sight ahead. 


210 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

I was in the chart-house and heard some one 
call out: 

^ Torpedo! * 

I jumped up at once to the bridge, and, on the 
way up, saw the torpedo about 800 yards from the 
ship approaching from about one point abaft the 
starboard beam headed for a point about midships, 
making a perfect straight surface run, alternately 
broaching and submerging to apparently 4 or 5 feet, 
at an estimated speed of at least 40 knots. No 
periscope was sighted. 

When I reached the bridge I found that the of¬ 
ficer of the deck had already put the rudder hard 
left and had run up emergency speed on the engine- 
room telegraph. The ship had already begun to 
swing to the left. 

I personally rang up emergency speed again, 
and then turned to watch the torpedo. . . . 

After seeing the torpedo and realizing the straight 
run, line of approach, and high speed it was making, 
I was convinced that it was impossible to manoeuvre 
to avoid it. Lieut. Kalk was officer of the deck at 
the time and I consider that he took correct and 
especially prompt measures in manoeuvring to avoid 
the torpedo. ... I deeply regret to state that 
he was lost as a result of the torpedoing of the ship, 
dying of exposure on one of the rafts. 

The torpedo broached and jumped clear of the 
water at a short distance from the ship, submerged 
about 50 or 60- feet from the ship, and struck ap¬ 
proximately 3 feet below the water line in the fuel- 
oil tank between the auxiliary-room and the after 
crew-space. 

The deck over the forward part of the after 
crew-space and over the fuel oil-tank just forward of 


DESTROYER MEN 


2II 


it was blown clear for a space athwartships of about 
20 feet from starboard to port, and the auxiliary 
room wrecked. The starboard after torpedo tube 
was blown into the air. No fuel oil ignited, and, ap¬ 
parently, no ammunition exploded. 

The depth-charges in the chute aft were set on 
‘ ready ’ and exploded after the stern sank. It was 
impossible to set them on ‘ safe ’ as the ship settled 
aft immediately after being torpedoed to a point at 
which the deck just forward of the deck-house was 
awash, making them under water. Immediately the 
ship was torpedoed. Lieutenant Richards, the gun¬ 
nery officer, rushed aft in an attempt to set the 
charges on ‘ safe,’ but was unable to get farther aft 
than the deck-house. 

As soon as the torpedo struck, I attempted to 
send out an S 0 S message by radio, but the main¬ 
mast had carried away, antennae falling, and all 
electric power had failed. I then tried to have the 
gun-sight lighting batteries connected up in an effort 
to send out a low-power message with them, but it 
was at once evident that this would not be practi¬ 
cable before the ship sank. There was no other ves¬ 
sel in sight, and it was therefore impossible to get 
through a distress signal of any kind. 

“ Immediately after the ship was torpedoed, every 
effort was made to get rafts and boats launched. 
Also the circular life belts from the bridge and sev¬ 
eral splinter mats from the outside of the bridge 
were cut adrift and afterward proved very useful 
in holding men up until they could get to the rafts. 
Weighted confidential publications were thrown over 
the side. There was no time to destroy other con¬ 
fidential matter, but it went down with the ship. 

The ship sank about 4.29 p. m., about eight 


212 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

minutes after being torpedoed. As I saw her set¬ 
tling rapidly, I ran along the deck and ordered 
everybody I saw to jump overboard. At this time 
most of those who were not killed by the explosion 
had got clear of the ship and were on rafts or wreck¬ 
age. Some, however, were swimming and a few ap¬ 
peared to be about a ship’s length astern of the ship, 
at some distance from the rafts, probably having 
jumped overboard very soon after the ship was 
struck. 

Before the ship sank, two shots were fired from 
No. 4 gun, with the hope of attracting attention to 
some near-by ship. As the ship began sinking, I 
jumped overboard. The ship sank stern-first, and 
twisted slowly through nearly 180 degrees as she 
swung upright. From this nearly vertical position, 
bow in the air to about the forward funnel, she went 
straight down. Before the ship reached the vertical 
position the depth charges exploded, and I believe 
them to have caused the death of a number of men. 
They also partially paralyzed, stunned or dazed a 
number of others, including Lieut. Kalk and myself 
and several men. 

Immediate efforts were made to get all survivors 
on the rafts and then get rafts and boats together. 
Three rafts were launched before the ship sank and 
one floated off when she sank. The motor dory, 
the punt and the wherry also floated clear. The 
punt was wrecked beyond usefulness, and the wherry 
was damaged and leaking badly, but was of consid¬ 
erable use in getting men to the rafts. The whale- 
boat was launched but capsized soon afterward, 
having been damaged by the explosion of the depth- 
charges. The motor sailer did not float clear, but 
went down with the ship. 


DESTROYER MEN 


213 

About 15 or 20 minutes after the ship sank, the 
submarine appeared on the surface about 2 or 3 
miles to the westward of the rafts, and gradually 
approached until about 800 to 1,000 yards from the 
ship, where it stopped and was seen to pick one un¬ 
identified man from the water. The submarine then 
submerged and was not seen again. 

“ I was picked up by the motor dory and at once 
began to make arrangements to try to reach the 
Scillys in that boat in order to get assistance to those 
on the rafts. All the survivors then in sight were 
collected and I gave orders to Lieut. Richards to 
keep them together. Lieut. Scott, the ship’s navigat¬ 
ing officer, had fixed the ship’s position a few min¬ 
utes before the explosion, and both he and I knew 
accurately the course to be steered. 

I kept Lieut. Scott to assist me and four men 
who were in good condition to man the oars, the en¬ 
gines being out of commission. With the exception 
of some emergency rations and half a bucket of 
water, all provisions, including medical kit, were 
taken from the dory and left on the rafts. There 
was no apparatus of any kind which could be used 
for night signalling. 

After a very trying trip, during which it was 
necessary to steer by the stars and by the direction 
of the wind, the dory was picked up about 1 p. m. 
the next day, by a small patrol vessel. One raft had 
been found and the survivors rescued at eight 
o’clock, the night before, the other at eight o’clock 
in the morning. 

The behavior of the officers and men under the 
exceptionally hard conditions is worthy of the high¬ 
est praise. Lieut. Scott, executive officer, accom¬ 
plished a great deal toward getting boats and rafts 


214 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

in the water, turning off steam from the fireroom to 
the engine room, getting life belts and splinter mats 
from the bridge into the water, firing signal guns, etc. 
. . . Lieut. Kalk, during the early part of the 

evening, but already in a weakened condition, swam 
from one raft to the other in the effort to equalize 
weight on the rafts. The men who were on the raft 
with him state, in their own words: ‘ He was game 
to the last! , . 

Among the enlisted men cited by the commander 
two may especially be mentioned: 


During the night, Charlesworth, boatswain^s 
mate, first class, removed parts of his own clothing 
(when all realized that their lives depended on keep¬ 
ing warm) to try and keep alive men more thinly 
clad than himself. This sacrifice shows his calibre, 
and I recommend that he be commended for his ac¬ 
tion. 

“ At the risk of almost certain death. Burger, sea¬ 
man, second class, remained in the motor sailer and 
endeavored to get it clear for floating from the ship. 
While he did not succeed in accomplishing this work 
(which would undoubtedly have saved 20 or 30 
lives), I desire to call attention to his sticking to 
duty to the very last, and recommend him as being 
most worthy of commendation. He was drawn 
under water with the boat, but later came to the 
surface and was rescued. 

I deeply regret to state that, out of a total of 7 
officers and 103 men on board at the time of the tor¬ 
pedoing, 2 officers and 64 men died in the perform¬ 
ance of duty.’’ 


DESTROYER MEN 


2IS 

Such instances could be multiplied, as in the tor¬ 
pedoing of the Army transport Antilles. Four men . 
of the guns’ crews went down with her. The follow¬ 
ing paragraph from the official report shows the 
character of American courage: 


“ The behavior of the naval personnel throughout 
was equal to the best traditions of the service. The 
two forward guns’ crews, in charge of Lieut. Tisdale, 
remained at their gun stations while the ship went 
down and made no move to leave their stations un¬ 
til ordered to save themselves. 

Radio Electrician Ausburne went down with the 
ship while at his station in the radio room. When 
the ship was struck, Ausburne and McMahon were 
asleep in adjacent bunks opposite the radio room. 
Ausburne, realizing the seriousness of the situation, 
told McMahon to get his life preserver on, saying, 
as he left to take his station at the radio key, ‘ Good¬ 
bye, Mac! ’ McMahon, later finding the radio room 
locked and seeing that the ship was sinking, tried 
to get Ausburne out, but failed.” 

Navy men do not have to be old-timers, either! 
Here is a characteristic statement from the senior 
naval officer on the torpedoing of the transport 

Finland: 

“ Cadet Officer David McLaren was the youngest 
officer on board—just 18 years old. After I had or¬ 
dered the lowering of the boats, this lad, who was 
in charge of one of them and would have been en- 


2i6 with the U. S. navy 

tirely justified in leaving the ship, which was be¬ 
lieved to be sinking, returned to the bridge and re¬ 
ported to me that his boat was lowered and clear of 
the ship and asked if he could be of any service. He 
remained on the bridge rendering valuable assist¬ 
ance and displaying a nerve and resourcefulness 
worthy of the best traditions of the sea. 

One naval lad was down in the living compart¬ 
ment, cleaning up, when the ship was struck. Some 
one in one of the boats hanging at the davits, seeing 
him hurrying along the promenade deck, asked him 
which boat he belonged to. He replied: 

^ Boat No. 4.^ 

“ ‘ This is No. 4. Jump in! ’ 

“ And the youngster replied: 

‘ Oh, no! I have to go to my gun! ’ 

And he did.^^ 

Similar instances could be cited in the cases of the 
sinking of the Alcedo, the President Lincoln, the 
Covington, the San Diego and the Chauncey as well 
as in the torpedo attack on the Mount Vernon, In 
the latter case, especially, the discipline and ef¬ 
ficiency of the Navy was marvellous, and that the 
ship was saved—^with 150 wounded on board—^was 
entirely due to the exactness of naval handling and 
the devotion of officers and men. 

It takes a good deal to get praise out of a,, real 
Army man or Navy man, but this was the letter re¬ 
ceived from Brigadier General Harries, soon after 
the crippled Mount Vernon reached Brest: 


DESTROYER MEN 217 

Sorrow, mingled with pride, for those who died 
so nobly. Congratulations on the seamanship, dis¬ 
cipline, and courage. . . . 

The best traditions of the Navy have been lifted 
to a higher plane. What a fine thing it is to be an 
American these days! 

The olive drab salutes the blue! ” 


CHAPTER XV 


NAVAL WAR TO-DAY 

Clem soon found himself sharing the feeling of 
almost every man in the American Navy who en¬ 
listed after the World War—an intense regret that 
he was too late to take part in the fighting. 

Aboard the destroyer, he was inconsolable at the 
thought that there were no more U-boats to chase, 
no more torpedoes to dodge. His pride in the Navy 
had become inordinate, and, as so often happens, it 
localized in his ship. Just as he had become con¬ 
vinced, aboard the Alaska, that 14-inch and 16-inch 
guns are the principal factors of naval warfare, and 
that the capital ship is the rock-bottom of the fleet, 
so, after a couple of months on board the Cunning¬ 
ham, he swore by the destroyers, and came to regard 
that class of vessel as being of the first importance. 

It was during his work on board the destroyer 
that Clem came to realize more fully that the Amer¬ 
ican Navy had been the determining issue in the 
submarine question during the war. The executive 

218 


NAVAL WAR TO-DAY 


219 

officer of the Cunningham had been an aide to Ad¬ 
miral Sims, commanding the United States naval 
forces abroad, during that time, and he knew the 
question thoroughly. 

Understand, Derry,’^ he said, in one of his 
friendly talks—for destroyer officers are much more 
chummy with the men than is possible to officers 
on battleships—“ that, to all intents and purposes, 
the conditions to-day are exactly the same as those 
of 1918, so far as naval warfare is concerned. Dur¬ 
ing the last ten years, naval devices have intensified 
in power and in range, but they have not changed in 
method. Ships are faster, armor is better, subma¬ 
rines are deadlier, torpedoes have been improved, 
and sea-planes are coming to play a more and more 
important part. Naval aviation pilots, for example, 
are the Navy’s present most crying need. 

But naval war, to-day, would be much the same 
as ten years ago; tactics and strategy are upon the 
same basis. Big fleets would enter into action with 
big fleets, commerce-destroyers would scour the seas 
and have to be hunted down by light cruisers, sub¬ 
marines would menace everything afloat, and the de¬ 
stroyers, patrol boats, submarine chasers and sea¬ 
planes would have to fight a combined battle to keep 
the submarines under.” 


220 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


And our own submarines, sir? 

Would be giving just as much trouble to the 
enemy, you may be sure! 

So you see, Derry, in order to grasp the why 
and wherefore of a destroyer, and to realize the na¬ 
ture and the intent of the work which you are do¬ 
ing, here, you need to understand exactly what the 
situation was when the American destroyers turned 
the tide of battle in the World War, ten years ago. 

Navy men must rigidly keep away from all dis¬ 
cussion of politics, therefore I will say nothing of 
our position before entering the war. But you may 
remember that German submarine warfare against 
non-combatant and neutral vessels was a strong 
factor in bringing the Congress of the United States 
to declare a state of war against Germany. The 
Presidential Message stated: 

^ The present German submarine warfare against 
commerce is a warfare against mankind/ 

Viewed from the point of view of naval strategy, 
this statement may be disputed; from any point 
of view it is exaggerated. I should be the last to 
deny that a large proportion of German submarine 
activity was absolutely justifiable. If it were not, 
America would not be justified in building sub- 



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NAVAL WAR TO-DAY 


221 


marines, at all, for submarines are only built with 
the intention of use in submarine warfare. 

No, let us be fair! We heard a great deal more 
of the isolated attacks on hospital vessels and neu¬ 
tral ships than of the fully permissible activities of 
the U-boats against enemy merchant vessels. And 
for neutral ships? Honesty compels us to admit 
that, even before we declared war, American con¬ 
traband of war was crossing the Atlantic in large 
quantities. We cannot very well lump all German 
submarine work as unfair, and build submarines 
ourselves with the intention of doing much the same 
thing! 

^ No attempt had been made to conceal the 
fact that German submarines were active against 
all shipping, and Admiral Sims did not receive his 
first jolt as to the actual situation until he reached 
the inner circles of the British Admiralty. To his 
consternation, not only did he find that the facts 
about losses from submarines had been concealed, 
but that actual defeat of the Allies was a matter of 
but a few weeks unless the situation materially 
changed for the better.^" 

“ The Admiral wrote: 

’ Words so grave as these, and the matters following, should 
not be penned by a non-expert, by no one who is not an officer 
in the tj. S. Navy. Accordingly they are directly quoted from 
Lieut.-Commander Fitzhugh Green, U. S. Navy, in his “ Our 
Naval Heritage,” Century Co., 1925. A book for every Ameri¬ 
can boy to read. F. R-W. 


222 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


“ ^ I was fairly astounded, for I had never imagined 
anything so terrible! ^ 

And this was the man we had armed with the 
latest and most secret information this country had; 
information of which our war-sleuths were very 
proud. It turned out that the reports of tonnage 
losses were incomplete, intentionally so, and that 
sinkings of submarines had been deliberately falsi¬ 
fied in order to undermine the enemy’s morale. The 
total of tonnage lost by submarine sinkings had 
already reached 536,000 tons in February and 
603,000 tons in March. At the rate that prevailed 
when Sims arrived, the figure for April would be 
1,000,000 tons. No one can give enough praise to 
the merchant skippers who stuck to their posts in 
the face of a certain destruction, soon or late. 

It did not take much arithmetic to show how 
things stood. The weather was getting more favor¬ 
able every day for the submarine. British anti¬ 
submarine forces were strained to the limit, yet- 
without stemming the tide of sinkings. At even the 
current rate of sinking, the seas would be clear of 
sea-borne traffic by the end of the summer. The 
maintenance of armies in France was seriously 
threatened. Only about six weeks’ food remained 


NAVAL WAR TO-DAY 


223 

for the civil population in England. Hoover re¬ 
ported that the grain supply might last three weeks. 
‘‘ Said Sims in his first detailed report: 

‘ The Command of the Sea is actually at stake. 
. . . The necessity for secrecy, which the British 

Government has experienced, and which I repeatedly 
encounter in London, and even in the Admiralty 
itself, is impressive. There have been remarkable 
and unexpected leakages of information throughout 
the war. . . . More ships! More ships! More 
ships! is heard on every hand. Briefly stated, I 
consider that at the present moment we are losing 
the war.^ 

I want you to observe, Derry, that this terrible 
situation was brought about by submarines and by 
submarines alone, and not so many of them, at 
that.’^ 

Yes, sir. Is that why all the foreign powers are 
building submarines, sir?, ’’ 

“We are, too. Every one is. Don’t forget, Derry, 
that the character of naval warfare during the 
World War showed a state of things which had 
never been seen before. It used to be ship against 
ship, fleet against fleet, and the non-combatant did 
not enter into the matter at all. In the World War 
it was not so. Blockade no longer was a device for 
preventing the passage of contraband of war; it was 


224 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

a device to bring the enemy to his knees by starv¬ 
ing out the non-combatant population, women and 
children included. Nation was set against nation 
and every living soul—all humanity—^was im¬ 
periled thereby. The submarine is unquestionably 
the deadliest ship of the seas, the destroyer is un¬ 
questionably the deadliest foe of the submarine. 
There you have it.” 

I see, sir.” 

Maybe you do, Derry, and maybe you donT. It 
wonT do you any harm if I make it clear. Ger¬ 
many had only about twenty submarines on con¬ 
stant duty, consider that! Twenty! With that 
handful she was sweeping the seas. As Tirpitz 
knew, success was almost in her grasp.” 

Why? ” 

Just for this reason: because a nation must eat, 
because merchant vessels carrying provisions for 
non-combatants as well as combatants cannot 
manoeuvre fast enough to dodge a torpedo, because 
troop transports must be large and make very easy 
targets. If Gennany had been able to keep fifty 
submarines cruising continually, almost anything 
might have happened. The Germans knew their 
power. It was because of the consciousness of an 
'approaching terrorization of the seas that they 


NAVAL WAR TO-DAY 


225 

risked the danger of arousing the United States 
against them. They figured that the moment of 
their sea control was at hand. But for our de¬ 
stroyers, they might have won the war at sea be¬ 
fore we could get any troops across. They counted 
on that, and they counted on sinking our transports 
in case we did join the Allies. Our destroyers turned 
the tide. 

Sims saw at once, as the British Admiralty had 
seen and known long before, that there were only 
two methods of defense against the submarines. One 
was to bottle them up in their bases—for the sub¬ 
marines of those days could not make very long 
cruises without returning for the recharging of their 
storage batteries—the other was to destroy them on 
the high seas. 

The first was the best method, but it was dif¬ 
ficult and slow. This bottling-up was achieved, at 
last, by the laying of the North Sea barrage, which, 
in turn, was made possible by the wholesale manu¬ 
facture of ‘ ash-can ’ mines in America, and the lay¬ 
ing of the greater part of that barrage by the ves¬ 
sels of the U. S. Navy. 

As a plan, that was all right for the future, 
Derry, but the need was immediate. England 
might be starved out before the barrage was com- 


226 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

pleted. The submarines already in action must be 
sunk, and that, speedily! Such work could only 
be done by destroyers. 

The destroyer had three means of attack against 
the U-boat. A submarine on the surface is not able 
to submerge instantly. It takes her from two to 
three minutes to submerge sufficiently to get below 
the ram of a destroyer (less, in modern submarines). 
Thirty-five knots—a destroyer’s speed—is over half 
a mile a minute. A submarine sighted at 1,000 yards 
away stands a good chance of being rammed and 
sunk before she can submerge. Moreover, she can¬ 
not fire a torpedo at a destroyer coming bows on. 
For one thing, the destroyer makes too small a tar¬ 
get ; for another, the torpedo would probably 
glance.” 

Yes, sir. I hadn’t thought of that, sir. I’d only 
thought of the guns.” 

For a gunner’s mate,” said the officer, smiling 
slightly, that is natural enough, and the gun crews 
of our destroyers distinguished themselves in the 
war. But a submarine is an exceedingly difficult 
thing to hit, even at moderately close range. Depth- 
charges, directly over the place where a submarine 
has submerged, are far more efficient, because the 
modernized depth-charge of T. N. T. exploding any- 


NAVAL WAR TO-DAY 


227 

where within a hundred yards of an under-water 
craft is enough to send her to the bottom. 

Then, Derry, there are two other points that you 
might not think of, but which are important, just 
the same. The first of these is the question of crew. 
It is not difiicult to transfer men from other ships 
to destroyers, and they can do the work. But sub¬ 
marine crews must be picked men, and they must 
have special training. The loss of thirty men, 
trained to submarine work, is more serious—from 
the point of view of proportional naval person¬ 
nel strength—than that of an entire destroyer’s 
crew. 

“ The other matter is expense. A submarine is a 
much more costly thing to build than a destroyer 
or a patrol chaser. A submarine will cost two mil¬ 
lion dollars, clear. Torpedoes are expensive, too. 
Costly to build, difiicult to equip, requiring a spe¬ 
cially trained crew, the loss of a submarine, in times 
of war, is crippling. Economically speaking, for a 
U-boat to attack a destroyer is poor policy. 

^^A destroyer is hard to hit, because, with her 
speed, she can dodge a torpedo if she sees it soon 
enough, and because she is a small target. And the 
effect—always speaking from the point of view of 
strategy—is nil. The loss of a single destroyer has 


228 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

practically no effect on the strength of the respective 
navies; the loss of a battleship has.” 

“Yes, sir, I see that! ” 

“ The same thing, only more so, is true of the 
‘ sea-fleas ’ or submarine chasers, which are nothing 
more or less than sea-going gasoline speed-launches, 
carrying depth-charges and small guns. Four hun¬ 
dred of them were built in eighteen months. Their 
strong point was the use of a microphone listening 
device, by means of which the sound of a sub¬ 
marine’s electric engines, even when running at low 
speed, could be picked up hailes away. Sound 
travels very far in water. A fleet of ‘ sea-fleas,’ 
cruising half a mile? apart from each other, could 
comb the sea of any under-water craft. 

“ The moment the muffled beat of a submarine’s 
electric engines was heard, the sub-chaser would call 
by radio for her sister fleas to help. They would all 
come and listen, until the submarine was exactly 
located, under >vater. A submarine, unless on the 
bottom, cannot maintain her level without her 
engines going any more than an aeroplane can stay 
up in the air without her propeller turning. Some 
subs, can Ho so now, they couldn’t then. 

“ At a given signal, all the tiny sub-chasers would 
drop a depth-charge simultaneously, surrounding 


NAVAL WAR TO-DAY 


229 

the region where the submarine had been found to 
be, and then they would chug off at full speed in 
all directions to get away from the ensuing explo¬ 
sion, which heaved up the sea like a volcanic erup¬ 
tion. Six submarines were sunk that way, nearly a 
third of Germany’s working submarine fleet. 

Briefly, Derry, you see that it isn’t worth a sub¬ 
marine’s while to attack a patrol of destroyers or 
sub-chasers for it profits her nothing and she runs 
a very strong chance of being sunk for her pains. 
Therefore—and this is very important—a battleship 
fleet well protected by destroyers, or a transport con¬ 
voy, well protected by destroyers is put almost out 
of the submarine’s reach. The protection of com¬ 
merce and the protection of transport, two most im¬ 
portant elements of naval warfare, thus demand, ab¬ 
solutely, the work of the destroyer.” 

Clem began to feel more and more important at 
the thought of his position as gunner’s mate on a 
destroyer. But, seeing that the officer seemed to be 
awaiting some comment on what he had told, Clem 
blurted out: 

The cruisers don’t seem to come into the scheme 
at all, sir! ” 

The executive officer smiled. 

“ It wouldn’t be safe for you to say so on board 



WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


230 

one of them/’ he returned, and it wouldn’t be true. 
You’re forgetting, entirely, Derry, the range of a 
cruiser’s guns. Let us suppose, for example—for I’ve 
told you that naval warfare to-day is much the same 
as in 1918, only more so—suppose that one, just 
one of the German naval cruisers had been able to 
slip away from Heligoland, and, on the open sea, had 
met a fleet of U. S. transports, filled with soldiers 
and protected by destroyers. We may be glad that 
this is a supposed case, and not a real one. 

What would have happened? First of all, the 
speed of the cruiser being greater than that of the 
transports, she could have come up to them at any 
time and from any point of the compass that she 
pleased. Let us suppose that some of the transports 
had 5-inch guns—very few of them did—and the 
destroyers had 4-inch guns. The destroyers 
wouldn’t have been able to do much shooting under 
7,000 yards, would they? ” 

^^No, sir! ” 

^^Even the light cruisers of the German Navy 
carried 9-inch guns, with an easy range of 10,000 
yards and over. All the cruiser would have to do 
would be to keep away from the transport fleet at 
her own preferred range, at her own speed, and 
sink one transport after the other, and all the de- 


NAVAL WAR TO-DAY 


231 

stroyers into the bargain, just as easily as you could 
lop off the head of a flower with a stick. 

I can remember, Derry, how, during the war, a 
good many people in the States used to criticize the 
British Fleet for acting as watch-dog all the time to 
the German High Fleet. They had to! The Battle 
of Jutland proved that. And it^s well to remember, 
Derry, that the British battleships and cruisers 
which bottled up the German cruisers were protect¬ 
ing American troop transports on the high seas four 
thousand miles away ©very bit as much as our de¬ 
stroyers were, while convoying the ships them¬ 
selves.’’ 

The boy nodded thoughtfully, and the officer went 
on: 

But while I said to you that naval warfare 
hasn’t changed much, Derry, you mustn’t forget that 
there was another branch of our naval war service 
which, during the war, was kept secret. ^ Now it can 
be told.’ Did you know that we sent submarines of 
our own to European waters?, ” 

No, sir! ” 

“ Well, we did, and submarine service on anti¬ 
submarine detail was probably the most unpleasant 
naval work of the war. The German submarine 
cruised floating fairly high. The American sub. had 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


232 

to lie beneath the surface all day and shoot its per¬ 
iscope only once in a while. As there was little way 
on the boat, it rolled frightfully. Condensation kept 
its bulkheads wet and all inside damp. The air was 
^ thick enough to be cut with a knife ’ at all times. 
The night was the only part of the twenty-four 
hours when any one could come on deck and breathe 
fresh oxygen; even then the sea was likely to be 
washing over everything. 

Another drawback was the fact that a friendly 
submarine or destroyer might be handy, when the 
submarine came up for air and might make every 
effort to sink the poor fellow on patrol, not knowing 
that it was an Allied craft. The detail lasted eight 
days, and few men returned to the base who were 
not in the throes of utter physical and nervous ex¬ 
haustion. Yet their work was priceless. Later, the 
Germans admitted dreading our submarine patrol 
more than any other defensive measure we had con¬ 
ceived.” 

Clem sat silent a moment. 

“ I was wondering, sir- 

‘‘ Well?” 

I was wondering, sir, if there wouldn't be a good 
'deal more submarine work in the next war—if there 
ever is a ‘ next war ’ ? ” 



NAVAL WAR TO-DAY 233 

Sure to be, Derry; as I said to you, every nation 
is building submarines/^ 

Then it seems to me a fellow ought to learn 
about it, sir/^ 

Would you like to? ” 

Clem made a wry face. The description which 
had just been given him of submarine life was not 
especially appealing. But he had introduced the 
subject, and was game. 

Yes, sir! ” he said, firmly, after a short hesita¬ 
tion. 

The executive officer rose and stretched his legs. 

I was expecting you to say that, Derry. That’s 
why I’ve been talking to you, this way. There has 
been a special request sent to all the vessels of the 
fleet asking us to name special candidates for the 
Submarine School at New London, Conn. That’s 
an officers’ school, but the Navy is arranging for 
some classes for enlisted men, also. It is high-grade 
work and rigidly confidential. I may say that the 
captain of the Alaska has mentioned your name, 
also, and that stands a good deal to your credit. 
Would you like to go to the Submarine School? 
Shall I fix it up? ” 

I’ll be sorry to leave the Cunningham, sir.” 

What does that mean? Yes, or no? ” 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


234 

Yes, sir. Thank you, sir! ’’ 

The officer became human again. 

Well, we’ll be sorry to lose you, Derry. But I 
think you are wise to go.” 



Courtesy of U. S. Navy. 

The Hero of Nanking. 

John D. Wilson, Signalman First Class, U. S. N., who, in a hail 
of fire from the invading Cantonese, climbed to the top of the 
Socony Tower, Nanking, China, and signalled the U. S. S. Noa 

(destroyer) to commence firing. 



t 



Courtesy of U. S. Xavy, 


U. S. Bluejackets. 

Upholding the Stars and Stripes while crossing the Isthmus of 

Panama by train. 





CHAPTER XVI 


WITH THE SUBMARINES 

Schooling, even though it be instruction for sub¬ 
marine work, with all its interest and its secrecy, is 

still schooling, and classes are much the same all 

« 

the world over. Clem thought that he was pretty 
well advanced, but, upon his arrival at the Subma¬ 
rine School, he was forced to plunge into a number 
of subjects which he had not learned at all. 

What worried him most—for he had not a me¬ 
chanical mind—^was the fact that he was required 
to get a firm grasp on electrical work. A submarine, 
under water, operates exclusively by electricity. 
The boy had to learn Diesel oil engines, as well, 
for, though he might have nothing to do with the 
engineering branch, a submarine’s crew is so few in 
number that every man aboard must have a working 
knowledge of every part of the craft. 

The book-work, as usual, came easily to him, and 
he began to feel that he was making good in his 
classes. The examinations for Annapolis were now 
only a few months away, and, except for a short 
period of shore leave, he had been plugging hard, 

235 


236 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

every day, for two years. As he looked back, it 
seemed incredible that he could have accomplished 
so much study, in addition to the constant and ever- 
changing work of every day. 

The most exciting part of his submarine training 
came when he went to the Navy Yard at Portsmouth 
for the practical part of his instruction in submarine 
work. The particular duty which he was detailed 
to master perfectly was that of the diving-rudder. 
As a gunner’s mate—Clem was Second Class, now— 
he was also supposed to look after the 5%-inch gun, 
housed on deck, to be used, naturally, only when the 
submarine was cruising on the surface. 

The torpedo-man was a seaman, also, a graduate 
of the Torpedo School, to which Clem had not gone 
—he could not go to everything!—but most of the 
rest of the men were from the artificer branch, en¬ 
gineers, machinists and electricians, with graduates 
from the Diesel Oil Engine School. There was not 
a single man on board without a rating. 

A submarine, now, is no longer quite the mystery 
that she was during the World War, but she has her 
secrets just the same. The main points in which the 
V. 3—to say nothing of V. 5 and V. 6—^^differ from 
earlier American models are matters of which it is 
quite unnecessary to treat. Let it sufiice to say that 




WITH THE SUBMARINES 237 

the newest American submarines are of the fleet 
type, of large size, strong gun-power, under-water 
radio apparatus, and carrying several of those dia¬ 
bolically ingenious devices—the distance radio- 
steered torpedo, able to accompany fleets on a long 
cruise, and exceedingly unpleasant customers for an 
enemy to encounter. 

Clem knew all about a submarine, so far as book- 
work was concerned, and, in the school, he had 
plenty of practice with models of a diving-rudder, 
such as it would be his special business to handle. 
Now, in Portsmouth, he would see the thing itself 
in operation. For three dives he would be permitted 
to watch, and then he would be expected to prove 
his worth, the expert beside him, of course. 

The boy was keyed up to the highest notch, when, 
after running out to sea, the shutting off of the 
Diesel oil engine^—which is used only for running on 
the surface—and the starting of the modernized 
electric storage battery engines informed him that 
the submarine was getting ready for the plunge. 

Clem^s heart beat fast, for it was his first dive. 
At a word from the captain, who was standing at 
the periscope, the two ballast-tank men got into 
simultaneous action, the eight valves were opened, 
and the sea-water came rushing into the tanks. 




238 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

The diving-rudder man did not take his hands 
off the controls nor his eyes off the dials which reg¬ 
istered speed, pressure, depth, and level. He dared 
not even glance at the young fellow whom he was 
teaching. Clem, wrought up with excitement, 
watched every movement carefully, and breathlessly 
regarded the sensitive electric dials. 

Now, Derry! Watch!” 

The rudder man did not need to explain the worE-^ 
ings of the rudder, for he knew that the boy had 
been through the course at the Submarine School, 
else he would not be there. Moreover, Clem had 
been fully taught the need for intense concentration 
in the handling of the diving-rudder, and the infinite 
delicacy of touch which it required. A submarine 
must run on an absolutely even keel. The adjust¬ 
ments are perpetual, but they are minute. 

The actual work itself, aside from the stress of 
attention, was simple. There were but the two con¬ 
trols, up and down, for the diving-rudder man had 
nothing to do with the compass course. A thin brass 
scale and a bent glass tube of colored water with an 
air-bubble floating free in it, both brilliantly il¬ 
lumined, were the principal instruments to show the 
slightest deviation of the submarine from the abso¬ 
lute horizontal. 


WITH THE SUBMARINES 239 

There was not the terrific racket on board this 
modern craft which used to exist on the early sub¬ 
marines, but there was a good deal of noise, just the 
same. Space in a submarine is cramped, and, ob¬ 
viously, all sounds are echoed back, since they can¬ 
not escape. Clem found the noise disturbing. He 
fought off the tendency to let his mind wander, and 
schooled himself to even greater concentration. 

The diving-rudder man did not once take his eyes 
off the brass scale and the air-bubble floating in that 
tube of colored water, nor during the two hours of 
his watch—should the submarine stay under water 
so long—would he dare even to glance aside for a 
single second. By his never-ceasing infinitesimal 
changes of pressure on the controls, he kept the 
under-sea boat on an even keel. Thus would Clem 
have to do!, 

A slight, a very slight moment’s inattention, a 
trifle too much down ” and the submarine would 
plunge. In addition to the set of dials which Clem 
was watching, there was, in the middle of the boat, 
a large dial, easily visible to all in the centre com¬ 
partment, showing the depth. This was a precau¬ 
tion, in case some accident should happen to the div¬ 
ing-rudder or the man. 

Submarines cannot dive very deep. The safety 


240 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

limit for this big fleet submarine—an exceptionally 
heavily built boat—was just below thirty fathoms 
(180 feet), with a pressure of nine tons to every 
square foot of the hull. Did she plunge below that 
—the end! The submarine’s steel shell would 
crumple in like a paper boat crushed in the hand. 
It were not well for the diving-rudder man’s atten¬ 
tion to stray! 

One of Clem’s classmates was also standing by the 
automatic-safety-control man, in order to gain prac¬ 
tical training in the handling of these devices. Clem 
himself would have to learn the automatic controls, 
likewise, after he had passed all the necessary tests 
for his handling of the diving-rudder. All this was 
a part of the practical training at the Portsmouth 
Navy Yard. 

The submarine safety-control man holds a post 
requiring just as much concentration, and an im¬ 
mediate perception of what is to be done in a mo¬ 
ment of urgency. This type of man and the nature 
of his work has been so well described by Connolly 
that there is no use in trying to improve the descrip¬ 
tion: 


“ In this same middle compartment, the operating 
compartment of the ship,” he wrote, describing one 



WITH THE SUBMARINES 241 

of his submarine trips, “ was a man with the spir¬ 
itual face of one who keeps lonely, intense vigils. 

“ He sat on a camp-stool, and his business seemed 
to be never to let his rapt gaze wander from several 
rows of gauges which were screwed to the bulkhead 
before him. Since I had first stepped into the sub., 
I had spotted him, and had been wondering if his 
ascetic look was born with him, or was a develop¬ 
ment of his job—whatever his job might be. 

Now I leained what his job was. He was the 
man who stood by the automatic safety devices. If 
anything happened to the regular gadgets, and it 
was life or death to get her to the surface, he was 
the man who, by moving a lever here, touching a 
switch there, or pressing an electric button, could set 
different devices in instantaneous working action to 
bring her to the surface.’^ 


Another of the crew whose attention must not 
stray! 

It is, perhaps, advisable to point out that modern 
submarine work has become much safer than it was 
ten years ago. This is important, for submarine 
work will necessarily grow, and an ever larger pro¬ 
portion of naval officers and men will be attached to 
this branch of the service. 

It can be stated that—aside from the usual safety 
devices—modern submarines have three automatic 
systems which will bring an under-sea boat to the 
surface. Landsmen should remember that the sur- 


242 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

face is the natural and normal position of a sub¬ 
marine, and that diving is a deliberate effort. There 
is some analogy between a man swimming under 
water and a submarine speeding under water. Both 
require power to keep under, both normally come to 
the top. A submarine is.not an under-water craft. 
She is a floating craft which can be made to stay 
under water by Ailing her ballast tanks and keeping 
the rudder down, just as a swimmer under water has 
to keep his hands pointing downwards. 

The most important of all safety devices is what 
is known as the multiple blowing station.” These 
are tahks of highly compressed air, with control 
valves to the ballast tanks. Even under water, the 
water in the ballast tanks can be blown out, almost 
in two seconds, for the pressure of the compressed 
air blowing the water out is greater than the pres¬ 
sure of the sea forcing the water in. And a subma¬ 
rine, with her ballast tanks empty, cannot be kept 
from rising promptly to the surface. The fuel tanks 
can be blown empty in the same way, and as these 
represent 8% of the displacement of the vessel, the 
lightening of this weight adds another important 
flotation factor. 

The exceeding buoyancy and lightness of a sub¬ 
marine is another matter where a landsman is apt to 


WITH THE SUBMARINES 243 

overestimate the dangers to the crew of a subma¬ 
rine. 


“ Ashore/^ says Connolly, “ we make the mistake 
of thinking of a submarine as a heavy, logy body, 
fighting always for her life beneath an unfriendly 
ocean; whereas she is a light-moving easily con¬ 
trolled creature cruising in a rather friendly element. 

The ocean is always trying to lift her atop, and 
not to hold her under the water. A submarine could 
be sent under with a positive buoyancy so small— 
that is, with so little more than enough in her tanks 
to sink her—that an ordinary man standing on the 
sea bottom could catch her as she came floating 
down and bounce her up and off merely by the 
strength of his arms. Consider a submarine under 
water as we would a toy balloon in the air, say. 
Weight that toy balloon so that it just falls to earth. 
Give it a touch with your finger—or blow it, even, 
as in ‘ breath-ball ’—and it will bounce up again. 

“ Picture a wind driving that toy balloon along the 
street and the balloon, as it bumps along, meeting an 
obstacle: What will the balloon do against that 
obstacle? Will it smash itself or bounce off? 
Bounce, evidently! What that balloon does is 
pretty much what a submarine would do if, while 
running full speed under water, she suddenly ran on 
a shoal. She would go bumping along the bottom; 
and meeting an obstacle, if not too high, she would 
be more likely to bounce over it than to smash her¬ 
self against it. 

But do they sometimes run into things and 
fetch up? 

That is right, they do. Navy men tell of one 


244 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

of the old C type which hit an excursion steamer, 
and the C’s bow went clear through the wooden 
steamer’s sides. 

The steamer’s engineer was sitting by his levers, 
reading the sporting page of his favorite daily, when 
he heard a crash and found himself on the engine- 
room floor. Looking round, he saw a wedge of steel 
sticking through the side of his ship. He did not 
know what it was, but he could see right away that 
it didn’t have a friendly look; so he hopscotched 
across the engine-room floor and up a handy ladder 
to the deck, taking the assistant along in his wake. 
After rescuing the passengers, it took three tugboats 
to pry sub. and steamer apart. 

‘‘ Our C boat must have hit her a pretty good 
wallop, for, as they fell apart, the steamer sank. 
They ran the little old C up to the navy yard to see 
how much she was damaged. Surely after that 
smash she must be shaken up—her bow torpedo- 
tubes must at least be out of alignment! But not a 
thing wrong anywhere; they didn’t even have to 
put her in dry dock. Out and about her business 
she went that same morning. 

Later, another of the same class came nosing 
up out of the depths, and bumped head on and into 
a breakwater^—a solid stone wall of a breakwater. 
What did she do? She bounced off, and, after a 
look around, also went on about her business.” 


A submarine is certainly safer than an aeroplane, 
and she is only in her early stages of development. 
But she does require two things: mechanical perfec¬ 
tion in building, and a highly trained crew to handle 


WITH THE SUBMARINES 245 

her. This had been thoroughly drilled into Clem’s 
mind at the Submarine School, and he had had ab¬ 
solutely no fear of danger when his turn came, at 
last, to take the diving-rudder. His only fear was 
lest he should not show himself expert enough. 

He took his post without the slightest outward 
sign of nervousness, for he knew that he was being 
watched. The Diesel stopped, the motors began to 
hum. But Clem had practised so often with the 
model, at the school, that every possible motion was 
as familiar to him as gun-drill. He held her at the 
proper depth, though she porpoised ” a little, and, 
certainly, was less steady than when the expert was 
directing her. 

^'Have to do a little better than that, Derry! ” 
said the commander, when she came up. 

Yes, sir. I will next time, sir! ” 

Oh, you don’t need to worry. You’ll catch it, 
all right.” 

And, on the next dive, the boy acquitted himself 
creditably enough to receive an approving nod from 
his instructor. 

Then came porpoising.” That was a little more 
difficult. Porpoising ” is a manoeuvre which con¬ 
sists of a series of rounded curves from a moderate 
depth, bringing the submarine almost but not quite 


246 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

to the surface of the water, high enough to let 
the periscope project, but not enough to show the 
conning-tower, holding her there a few seconds, long 
enough to let the skipper get a good look at a sup¬ 
posed enemy but not long enough to let the foe 
spot the sub., then curving to a depth again. Three 
or four such porpoise jumps, with a change of course 
each time, gives the submarine captain the aim 
necessary with a mechanical range-finder. This 
done, off goes the automatic torpedo on her errand 
of destruction. 

The sea babies are sea babies no longer, but 
thousand-ton boats able to cruise across the Atlantic 
or Pacific Oceans and make good weather of it, able 
to accompany the fleet on a long cruise anywhere 
and everywhere they want to go, able to go down to 
180 feet without danger of collapsing, possessing 
special devices (not made public) to protect them¬ 
selves against depth-charges dropped either by de¬ 
stroyers or sea-planes, and with wicked, fearfully 
wicked, torpedoes, which by means of radio control, 
can be steered in a given direction at hundreds of 
yards from the sub. with just as much precision as 
if there were a phantom crew aboard her. 

The submarine, too, has her own way of talking. 
The improved Fessenden oscillator sets off vibratory 




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WITH THE SUBMARINES 247 

waves in the water which can be picked up by 
another submarine tuned thereto, and they can 
chat and discuss the position of an enemy at their 
leisure, using the Morse, or a special code. If in¬ 
jured, they can thus signal for help. The submaruie 
is no longer a lonely creature, invisible under water, 
but a part and parcel of the family of a great sea¬ 
going fleet. 

The submarine clearly showed her superiority to 
the surface ship in 1917; the American destroyers 
and the sea-fleas ” showed themselves able to whip 
the submarines, in 1918; by about 1922, honors were 
even. In 1927, the newer submarines have protec¬ 
tive devices which make them every bit as dangerous 
as they were in 1917, but naval constructors and 
inventors speak confldently of new anti-submarine 
schemes which will again give the surface ships the 
mastery. 

It is the old story of the respective powers of 
armor-piercing shells and shell-resisting armor all 
over again, and which will be victorious, only the 
next war can telL May it be far away! 


CHAPTER XVII 


HAWKS overhead! 


Aircraft! 

The Americans taught the world to fly, the Amer¬ 
ican Navy first crossed the Atlantic by air, and the 
United States holds more air records than any other 
country in the world. The American physicist, 
Sperry, working in cooperation with the U. S. Navy, 
developed the all-important gyro-compass and gyro- 
stabilizer for airplanes. The first sea-plane to be 
used in naval warfare was in 1914 when the official 
sea-plane detail of the U. S. S. Mississippi appeared 
off Vera Cruz and the hawks served as naval 
scouts. In 1919, the giant sea-plane NC 4, with a 
crew of five, crossed the Atlantic. In 1920, a whole 
squadron of these flying-boats made a 13,000-mile 
cruise through the West Indies, cooperating with 
the Atlantic Fleet. 

The most significant of all, from the Navy point 
of view, were the manoeuvres of the battleships and 
sea-planes in the vicinity of Panama, in 1923. It 
is related that the admiral in command could not 

248 


HAWKS OVERHEAD! 


249 

sleep the first night because of the intensity of emo¬ 
tion that this miracle of human progress had 
aroused; for he could sit in his cabin behind protect¬ 
ing mine-fields, and see ninety thousand square miles 
of ocean surface. 

This was all the talk at Annapolis when Clem 
Derry went at last to try for the entrance examina¬ 
tions. He knew that he ought to pass, not because 
of any individual talent of his own, but because of 
two years and a half of steady work, and because of 
the unfailing help and assistance that he had re¬ 
ceived from the ofiicers and the petty officers whom 
he had met and under whom he had worked, all 
along the line. 

Curiously enough, it was his work with the sub¬ 
marines which had given him the greatest confi¬ 
dence. The weeks in Portsmouth Navy Yard, quiet 
and restful weeks in spite of the occasional subma¬ 
rine plunges, had enabled him to take stock of his 
knowledge and of his development. He considered 
himself still a boy, but in many ways he was a man. 
He must needs be so if he were to become an officer 
of the Navy. 

The examinations were stiff, incredibly stiff, and 
when at last, utterly brain-weary, the Hoy left the 
Naval Academy Building where they had been held. 


250 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

a black doubt possessed him. One thing, alone, was 
sure. He had done as well as he could. Should he 
have failed—^he hardly dared envisage the possibility 
—^he might try again next year. After that, no! 
He would be too old. American Navy officers begin 
young. Twenty is the age limit for the reception of 
enlisted men, save in the case of those who have be¬ 
come warrant officers. 

He had gone from the Cunningham to the subma¬ 
rine work, and as the latter was only a temporary 
detail, he was due to return to his destroyer as soon 
as the Annapolis examinations were finished. But 
the Cunningham was away on cruise, and it was 
Clem’s duty, therefore, to report at Washington. 

Amazing as it may seem to any one who does not 
know the accuracy with which Navy records are 
kept, Clem found that the Navy Department knew 
all about him. He wore the Navy Cross, for one 
thing, and that made him a marked man. 

As Clem had not yet taken the shore leave which 
was due him, the officer in charge offered to let the 
boy go to his home in Massachusetts until the result 
of the examinations should be announced, unless, of 
course, the Cunningham returned to port before that 
time, in which case it would be his duty to rejoin 
her, immediately. 


HAWKS OVERHEAD! 


251 

Clem thanked the officer but hesitated, obviously. 

“ What is it, Derry? 

Well, sir,^’ said the boy, knowing that he could 
count on a sympathetic hearing, I was nominated 
for Annapolis, a long time ago. I couldn’t go there, 
because Father got ruined. That has worried him a 
good deal. That’s an old story, sir. 

“ And now, this time, sir, I haven’t dared to tell 
him that I was actually going up for Annapolis, 
because he’d be so disappointed if I didn’t get 

through-” and he repeated his father’s last 

words. “ So home is just the last place where I 
want to go, right now. And, sir, if it were possible, 
I should like to be put at work.” 

‘‘You’re anxious about the examination results, 
are you, Derry? ” said the officer kindly. “ I can un¬ 
derstand that. Well, if that’s the situation, I can see 
that the time might seem to pass more quickly, if 
you were on duty. Let me see—^it’s a little out of 
the ordinary, of course, but three weeks isn’t long 
to wait. Shall I transfer you to the submarines, 
again? ” 

“ If you please, sir- 

“ Well? ” 

“ They were saying at Annapolis, sir, that there 
is a great need for aviation pilots, sir. I don’t know 





WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


252 

anything at aU about aircraft, and Lieutenant 
Lankester, my divisional officer on the Alaska, sir, 
told me that I ought to try to get to be as much of 
an ‘ all-round ’ man as possible/’ 

H’m! He’s quite right, of course. That’s not 
a bad idea of yours, Derry. We shall need aviators, 
more and more, though I fancy that the greater part 
of air work will be done by officers for a long time to 
come. If you should pass for Annapolis, and I hope 
that you will—next year, at least, if not this year— 
some knowledge of aviation will always stand you 
in good stead. 

“ Look here, Derry. The Cunningham is cruising 
in the Caribbean. If I should give you a temporary 
detail to the Officers’ Aviation School in Pensacola, 
explaining the circumstances, they’d find something 
for you to do down there. What, of course, I don’t 
know. You can’t be admitted to the classes, since 
they’re not for enlisted men, but you certainly could 
pick up something of aero-mechanics. Then, from 
Pensacola, it will be easy for you to rejoin your ship. 
Is that about what you want?” 

‘‘Yes, sir; oh, yes, sir! ” 

The boy’s eyes were shining. It was the very 
thing for which he had been hoping, yet scarcely 
daring to hope. 


HAWKS OVERHEAD! 


253 

Until the days of his arrival at Pensacola, Clem 
had lumped all aircraft merely as land-planes or sea¬ 
planes without paying much attention to types. 
It came to him with a considerable element of sur¬ 
prise to find that there were five distinct types of 
sea-planes in use in the modern Navy, each one with 
its special line of action. One of the younger officers 
explained this to him: 

“ You see, Derry,’’ he said, “ there is a kind of re¬ 
semblance between a torpedo and bombing plane 
and a submarine, and between a combat plane and a 
destroyer. I’ll show you. A torpedo plane is de¬ 
signed to attack the capital ships of an enemy, just 
as the submarine is planned to do; she is, herself, 
protected by a fieet of combat planes against attack 
by enemy combat planes, just as destroyers protect 
against other destroyers. The tactics of the air do 
not differ very greatly from those of the sea. 

“ Take the combat planes, first, like that one 
standing by the hangar, over there. These craft are 
of the smaller type, with high speed, and light but 
very efficient machine-guns. Their principal work 
is that of fighting, either as individual planes or in 
squadron formation. A combat plane is supposed to 
attack any enemy combat plane, as in the old duel¬ 
ling days. For that, pilot skill and gunnery skill are 


WITH THE U. S. NAVY 


254 

essential. It is also supposed to attack and crash 
any enemy slow-flying torpedo or bombing plane, 
and therein lies the advantage of its speed. 

Fighting or combat planes may be put on bat¬ 
tleships, as well as on regular aircraft-carriers, and, 
if you will come to the Technical Library to-morrow, 
Derry, Ill show you the designs of the newest ^ cata¬ 
pult’ and another device for launching combat 
planes from the deck of a battleship. Most of the 
craft of this type are without pontoons, in order to 
lessen weight and thus increase speed. 

The torpedo and bombing planes are, compara¬ 
tively speaking, more perfected in type than the 
combat planes, so far as actual flying and load¬ 
carrying are considered. These are types for of¬ 
fensive warfare, only, and can operate safely only 
when under the protection of combat planes. Load- 
capacity is more important than speed. They carry 
a full-size automobile torpedo underneath and be¬ 
tween the pontoons. The design is perfected, and 
yet the tactical usefulness of this type has yet to be 
deflnitely determined.” 

Why, sir? ” 

“ It is a question of practical operation under the 
conditions of war, Derry. It is much more difficult 
for a torpedo plane to get near enough to an enemy’s 









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K in 




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o 





















Scout Planes of the Battleships. 











HAWKS OVERHEAD! 


255 

capital ship to discharge her torpedo with accuracy 
than it is for a submarine to do so. A sub. can keep 
herself hidden under water, but a bombing plane is 
not hidden by the air, and would be an easy prey to 
any fleet possessing a defensive and offensive squad¬ 
ron of planes, with which most fleets are equipped, 
to-day. 

There is another thing, too. Bombing from 
planes has not proved at all satisfactory. An aver¬ 
age of 2% hits is considered good, even at the low 
altitude of 5,000 feet. More important still, gravity 
bombs are thin-shelled, and, with a well-armored 
deck and upper works, an enemy battleship could 
receive a shower of bombs without incurring any 
vital damage, except to her superstructure. A steel 
grating above decks, such as has already been de¬ 
vised, would render a battleship almost invulnerable 
to overhead bomb attacks.” 

But how about depth-charges, sir? ” 

“Against battleships! Ah yes, I remember, you 
have just come from the submarines, where depth- 
charges play a very important part. But perhaps 
youVe overlooking something, Derry. The skin of a 
submarine is like tissue-paper compared to the 
hardened-steel shell-resisting armor of a first line 
battleship. 


256 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

A depth-charge which would bend, bulge, or 
rend the plates of a submarine, which, in any case, 
would derange the delicate stability on which an 
under-sea boat depends, wouldn’t do more than 
scratch a battleship’s paint, if as much. A ton of 
high explosive, exploding a hundred feet from an 
enemy battleship—and that would be marvellously 
accurate charge-dropping, under war conditions— 
would have less effect, less, mark you, Derry, than if 
you thumped on the side of the battleship with your 
fist.” 

Then just what is the use of a bombing plane, 
sir? I thought air-bombs had been tested on the 
vessels which we scrapped in order to meet the re¬ 
quirements of the Limitations of Armament Con¬ 
ference, sir.” 

They have been tested, and that’s exactly why 
I’m talking to you this way. They failed hideously. 
In the case of the U. S. S. Washington, where there 
was obviously no counter-attack either by anti-air¬ 
craft gun-fire, or by protecting combat planes, such 
as there would be in real war, the old craft took three 
bombs and two torpedoes from the bombing planes, 
and was seaworthy enough, after that, to ride out a 
three-day gale. With a crew aboard, she could have 
been taken into port quite easily. She finally had 



HAWKS OVERHEAD! 


257 

to be sunk by direct gun-fire. So much for bombing 
a battleship from the air. 

But you must not let yourself run away with 
the idea that the theory of bombing planes is un¬ 
sound. On the contrary. The bombing plane itself 
is a success; it is the projectile which needs to be 
improved. For example, gas-bombs, if developed, 
could be very dangerous. An enemy battleship crew, 
even if only temporarily disabled by poison gas, 
would put that vessel absolutely at the enemy’s 
mercy. She could not be steered, her guns could not 
be fired, nor her engines run. Naval experts are 
working on that problem, but we are not free to 
say what they have achieved.” 

Then, sir,” objected Clem, if the bombing 
plane isn’t dangerous, why are combat planes so 
necessary? ” 

“ Because we have no means of knowing whether 
other nations may not have solved the problem of 
air-projectiles—every nation keeps its inventions 
secret. One of the main purposes of the Navy’s con¬ 
stant preparation in times of peace is to be sure of 
obtaining a victory, in time of war. 

You must remember, too, Derry, that while the 
bombing plane cannot yet be considered an entire 
success, the spotting plane has become an imperative 


258 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

necessity. With 16-inch guns—especially with the 
added elevations which Congress has authorized— 
the spotting of long-range shots from the battle¬ 
ship has become impossible, except under very un¬ 
usual conditions of visibility. The spotting and 
scouting planes, equipped with a powerful radio ap¬ 
paratus, report back to the fire-control room just 
where the shells are falling in order that correction 
of range may be made.” 

Clem nodded. He knew the fire-control room 
work very thoroughly. 

“ Observation and spotting planes are essentially 
those which are used in the neighborhood of an 
enemy. You can see for yourself, Derry, that it is 
of tremendous advantage to know where the enemy’s 
fleet is and of what ships it is composed, in order 
to determine whether or no it is wise to engage 
battle. 

An observation plane reports all the enemy’s 
movements, and just as soon as fighting starts, it 
takes up the duties of a spotting plane. It will 
not be allowed to do so scathelessly, and a cloud of 
combat planes will rise up from the enemy’s air¬ 
craft-carriers to spoil its little game. Our own 
planes will defend, and thus the fight on sea will be 
(duplicated by a duel in the air. 


HAWKS OVERHEAD! 


259 

“You see, Derry, the pilot-in-charge must thor¬ 
oughly understand all the tactics of naval strategy 
in order to be able to interpret to his own fleet the 
fulness of the meaning of the movements of the 
enemy below. It is for this reason that the Navy 
is developing a corps of naval gunnery experts who 
understand the tactics of the gun-duel both from 
aloft and from the ship^s deck. Such knowledge, 
together with a sure facility in its use, requires long 
years of training and experience. 

“ Personally, I hope to remain in the Aircraft 
branch of the Service, for I consider it one of the 
most important arms of the future, and the Aircraft 
Squadron Commander may become as valuable to 
his country as the captain of a flrst-line battleship.’’ 

Clem’s eyes glistened, but, with as yet no knowl¬ 
edge as to how he had fared in his examinations at 
Annapolis, he dared not speak the words that were 
in his mind. That was the trouble of the Navy! 
Every branch of it seemed more interesting and 
vital'than the other. What a service! 

“ And that brings up the question of aircraft- 
carriers, Derry, a good deal of a problem, now. The 
largest plane-carrier we possess is the converted bat¬ 
tle cruiser Lexington, The Saratoga is being built. 
The Lexington can carry seventy-two planes, of 


26 o with the U. S. navy 

which thirty-six may be torpedo or bombing ma¬ 
chines.- As the Lexington type costs well over thirty 
millions of dollars to build, it is easy to see that the 
Navy is definitely preparing for an enormous air 
fleet, for which it will need the men.” 

And the dirigibles, sir? ” 

“ An unknown quantity, just at present. The 
Los Angeles is the only Navy dirigible in commis¬ 
sion. Mooring-masts have now been erected in vari¬ 
ous parts of the country, so that she can tour at 
will, as well as being moored, when occasion re¬ 
quired, to her special tender at sea. In 1925, she 
showed her ability to take part in the manoeuvres 
of the fleet, and since then,, has taken part in naval 
tactics. 

But her military value is 'problematic. It is 
possible, that, accompanied by a strong force of com¬ 
bat planes, dirigibles may become a better and safer 
means of military transport than steamships. 
Cheaper, too, for, mile for mile, the fuel bill of a 
rigid airship is a little less than one-tenth that of a 
steamship. Further improvements, now well under 
way, will make dirigibles as safe as any ship upon 
the seas and the day is not far off when an airship 
will be able to deposit a thousand troops actually 
at the fighting base more than three times as fast as 


HAWKS OVERHEAD! 


261 

can be done by an Army or Navy transport, which, 
after all, can only reach a seaport, requiring a huge 
port base and all the troop train complexities.” 
That would save several weeks, sir! ” 

Exactly. And men will be needed for the dir¬ 
igibles, too! And more planes for dirigible convoy! 

■ Watch the Aviation branch of the Navy, Derry! 
We are stepping out, and stepping out fast! ” 
Derry soon found that the Aviation Service was 
more than a special branch of the service, it was 
something quite unique, and called for a very 
marked type of men. Here, more than in any 
branch of the Navy, individuality is at a premium, 
and responsibility is as much needed as efficiency. 
It would not be fair to say that the finest men in 
the Navy are found there, for the finest men in the 
Navy are found everywhere: in the air, on the 
decks, in the Black Gang, and in the men who dive 
under sea. But the Aviation boys have confidence 
in themselves, confidence in their branch, confidence 
in their Navy and confidence in their country. 

The time of waiting which Clem had feared would 
drag, passed on wings, and he was sorry when orders 
came for him to proceed to Guantanamo, where the 
Cunningham had come to port. As yet, there was 
no word from the Naval Academy at Annapolis. 


262 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

Five days passed before he was able to rejoin his 
ship, and, when he came to shore and saw the Cun¬ 
ningham and the Alaska both lying there, the boy’s 
heart was torn between the two ships on which his 
Navy life had been spent and the Aviation Station 
that he had just left. Surely the Navy is a real 
home to the man who has the gift of seeing it in all 
its splendid whole. 

He sprang up the ladder hanging over the de¬ 
stroyer’s side, went up and saluted the officer of the 
watch, who, after returning the salute, reached out 
and grasped the boy’s hand. 

Glad to have you back, Derry. I hear you’ve 
been at Pensacola? ” 

“ Yes, sir. I’m glad to be back, sir. It looks like 
home to be here again, sir. I never can forget that 
the Cunningham found me for the Navy.” 

‘‘Ah! Well, the commander asked me to tell 
him just as soon as you came aboard.” 

“ He did, sir? ” 

“ Yes.” The officer turned to a man near by: 

“Whellan, my respects to the commander and 
please inform him that Clement Derry has come on 
board.” 

“ Yes, sir.” 

The man was off like a shot. 


HAWKS OVERHEAD! 263 

Clem was burning to ask questions, but the officer 
of the watch volunteered nothing. 

Distances are not great on a destroyer, and the 
messenger was back in less than a minute. 

“ The commander is in the chart-room, sir, and 
he says, sir, will Derry please step up! ’’ 

Go ahead, Derry,^^ said the officer of the watch. 
** I don’t think he’ll eat you up, this time.” 

Clem went up, his heart beating fast, and the 
commander rose as he entered. 

Little did I think, Derry,” he said, as the lad 
came forward, that when I rescued you from Nine 
Quays Island nearly three years ago, I should ever 
have the pleasure of telling you that you have be¬ 
come an officer of the United States Navy. You 
have passed the entrance examinations to the Naval 
Academy, and with a very creditable mark. The 
radio came yesterday. You will leave for Annapolis 
to-night.” 

Clem took the commander’s outstretched hand, 
but though he tried to frame the words “ Thank you, 
sir,” they would not come. He choked on them. 

There flashed before his eyes a scene at home, 
when he was just a little lad, before the trouble had 
come, and when his father had told him of the plans 
that had been made for his future. He saw his 


264 WITH THE U. S. NAVY 

father then, and he saw him now, a broken man, 
pinning all his hopes on his boy’s success. 

But the earlier scene remained with him, and he 
seemed to hear again, around the table in his old 
home, the toast of which every American should be 
proud: 

Gentlemen! The Navy! ” 


THE END 






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